


love doesn't conquer all but neither does running away, you moron.

by crostiina



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, Canonical Character Death, Drug Use, Emotional Manipulation, Endgame Pynch, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Slow Burn, Suicide, everything goes wrong but then gets better
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-03
Updated: 2019-10-28
Packaged: 2020-07-29 18:02:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 69,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20086444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crostiina/pseuds/crostiina
Summary: Sometimes you just can't magically pull an entire car out of your dreams. What you can do, instead, is pick every possible bad option until you're too far from your friends to know how disappointed they are. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't.





	1. being a teenager is hard but sometimes growing up is harder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> some bad things happen here. they are supposed to be percieved as bad. the dynamics between ronan and kavinsky are absolutely not okay and I want to make it absolutely clear. sometimes love is complicated. sometimes it's also a bad thing that eats you alive and you have to fight it really hard to get out of it. ronan will.  
also, I figured making ronan an artist was a good way to keep his dreams around.

For how much he strived constantly to forget and lose himself, Ronan didn't really like clubs. He got the charm, really, he thoroughly appreciated the bass shaking his bones, the quick intoxication of badly mixed cocktails, the way standing in the right places made the music so loud it was hard for his thoughts to come through, but those were temporary things. They had to – and only could be – enjoyed in moderation. 

Eventually the good songs would come to an end, the sweet high of the first glasses leaving room for a bitter and pathetic version of himself, something that reminded him of the boy that collapsed in churches late at night and was terrified of how easy it was for his best friend to find other people to love. 

He hadn’t seen Gansey in years, now that he thought about it. He made sure it was that way by religiously ignoring every occasional text or birthday phone call. That was how things were supposed to be, he wasn't the boy his righteous friend wanted to save anymore. Or a boy at all, really. 

Still, he didn’t know what kind of man he was becoming. The kind to get shitfaced on a weeknight for no particular reason, maybe. The kind who thought about his old high school friends while lazily drawing a votive image of the Virgin Mary on the wall of a bathroom at 4 a.m. That was the time for saints, he had learned, the narrow window between the disappointing reality of the day and the psychotic fantasies of what was left of the night.

That was also the time when he remembered how fucking annoying those kind of places were, when he was too drunk to leave on his own but not nearly enough to forget where it was or ignore the unbearable sensation of unknown bodies pressing against his own. When the sweat and smell and unfocused eyes caught up with him and everything suddenly looked pointless and pathetic. To be honest, it was also extremely easy to find everything pathetic, when he was standing outside a bathroom stall, waiting for K to be done jamming whatever shit he had picked for the night up his brain, so they could finally leave.

It always became too much, at that point, the people piling up outside the doors, the knocking and shouting and the horrible screech the marker made sliding on the tiles. Everything suddenly insufferable and unavoidable as he traced the last ugly letter under the drawing. 

ORA PRO NOBIS PECCATORIBUS it read, the writing slurry and imprecise in a way that made the simple but elegant image under it look like a blaspheme miracle.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He didn’t answer immediately, taking his time putting the cap back on the marker and sliding it into the back pocket of his jeans.

“Wouldn’t you like to know, asshole.”

His tone was calm under its usual acid coating, someone could say even sweet.

“No, not really.”

He let out a quiet laugh and turned slowly towards the voice. Of course, he'd immediately recognize it, the raspy tone, the snarky way of pronouncing the words that made everything feel like a cruel joke.

Joseph Kavinsky stood just a few inches from him, skin bluish under the neon lights, his whole body slightly curved to the side in a way that made him look like an inquisitive child. He still had coke under his nose. Ronan brushed it away with his thumb, a quick and almost automatic gesture.

That kind of thing would have pissed him off, once. He would have told him it was fucked up, really, that he didn’t seem to care or notice how out of it he looked, that he was messed up enough without burning whatever surviving brain matter he had left.

He had even tried to make him quit, when his feelings settled down in a shape too similar to what he imagined love to be. Pointless. Pathetic. Every attempt just another pretense for him to either laugh or quietly spit out some of the poison the other so dearly harvested inside him. He made peace with it, eventually, as he'd already done with everything else. 

He just pretended like it didn’t hurt. He’d gotten extremely good at that.

It was routine, now, something he was used to, like the hint of a smile at the corner of Kavinsky’s lips or the way his fingers felt on his skin, brushing under the fabric of his shirt to secure a lazy grip just above his hipbone.

His eyes were a different matter, though, too hollow and tired not to make something inside him physically ache for a brief moment, as he met his gaze. 

He thought about how angry those kinds of feelings used to make him, how tight and explosive they felt in his guts, once. Everything was dim now, easy to acknowledge and brush away.

“ Pray for us sinners. ” he translated, in a sarcastic tone that made the words feel bitter on his tongue, desecrated. Too worthy for a place like that, for someone like him. 

Kavinsky let out a low chuckle and shook his head, unknowingly letting him admire the exposed curve of his neck, the sharp jaw he traced with his fingers hundreds of times. It was unfair, really, how handsome he was, in a peculiar and terrifying way that made him want to kiss him and run away at the same time. A spectacle of sharp lines and bruised skin and starving eyes he couldn’t get enough of. It was absolutely intoxicating.

He watched the way his lips curled, then slowly parted. He thought he was gonna say something about dumb beliefs or Latin classes or whatever shit he found appropriate to ridicule the occasion. He just kissed him instead. 

He was never gentle when he did, he had never been, he was hungry and mad and eager to drown him in that slow and lukewarm kind of desire. It was alright, though, Ronan liked losing himself in the soft curve of his lips just fine.

\---

Whatever it was that they had, it started with Gansey’s car.

The obnoxiously orange 1973 Camaro his best friend drove wasn’t the fastest car, let alone the best suited for racing, but Ronan constantly felt the urge to test it in the streets anyway. He couldn’t explain why, he just felt it in his bones every time he ran his fingers over the hard metal of the hood or watched the road unravel as he laid in the passenger seat, wind brushing over his face and a sense of yearning, a desire that had something to do with misbehaving and a lot with challenging fate.

Of course, Gansey wouldn’t let him. In hindsight, he  was right, though Ronan highly doubted he’d imagined how much of a disaster it actually turned out to be. If he had, he would have been a bit more careful with his keys, looked for them a little harder instead of just giving him a weary, paternal look and leaving for D.C.

It was a coincidence, really, he would have never dared to steal them. He just found them by chance, forgotten in the fridge, between a beer can and the empty space formerly occupied by a water bottle. If he focused for just one moment, he could see with artistic precision how they ended up there, the quick and elegant movement of Gansey’s hand, unaware of the misstep. He had grabbed for the can, at first, his conscience too loud, the transgression too impossibly sacrilegious to be brushed away by the rush of adrenaline.

His best friend towered over his life with the might of a patron saint, absolutely untouchable, always forgiving, no matter how much he drank or how often he skipped school, how rude and venomous he got, he could never stride away from his glory. Stealing his car would mean crossing the line between blasphemy and mortal sin. Ronan didn't believe in forgiveness, he didn't want to meet the part of Gansey that didn't as well.

But he was a being of flesh, made for grudges and mischief, and a quiet voice in his brain kept reminding him that it wasn’t that bad, really, if he avoided getting caught. How was Gansey supposed to find out, when he was enjoying his fancy parties with Adam, the palatable fried, the voice of conscience that Ronan both sought after and ran from in his dreams? Another whisper, familiar and bothersome, also reminded him that his friend wouldn’t suspect anything because he  trusted him, but he was good at ignoring good counsel, even from himself.

So, eventually, he gave up. The uncertain murmuring of the engine felt like music in his ears when he started the car and, in the rush of adrenaline and euphoria, Kavinsky surprised and pleased expression almost made him feel like it was worth the risk.

But, of course, it wasn’t. Of course, he crashed the car and got himself kicked out of Eden.

He could still feel the scent of burned rubber and gasoline in the air, the wreckage of what used to be his best friend’s most cherished possession. Gansey loved that car, he had picked it and constantly went to the trouble of having it fixed, no matter how shitty and stubborn the damn thing was. That was just how he was, how he behaved with the things he loved, including him. He had picked him, for whatever reason, caring for him and trusting him even when he didn’t look or acted like himself anymore, even when it got painfully obvious he didn’t really deserve it.

But the Camaro was too broken to be fixed, now, and Ronan felt that way too.

That was when Kavinsky’s Mitsubishi had stopped beside him, one window pulled down.

"What do you want?" he spat out the words without looking at him, angry and desperate and filled to the brim with the desire to disappear.

K didn’t seem to care. He never did.

"To take you for a ride?" he said, too perfectly calm, to be honest, as if he was purposely trying to piss him off with that condescending demeanor.

It worked perfectly. Ronan turned towards him, boiling with rage and ready to hit something.

“And why  the fuck would I want that?” he shouted this time, too loud and upset to conceal how much he was hurting.

Kavinsky laughed, low and vile and inappropriate. Ronan hated him fiercely, but he hated way more how hauntingly attractive he found him, just like that, toxic and cruel.

He watched him slowly tilting his head to the side, before giving it a shrug.

“Fuck, Lynch, just chill. You can come back and mourn your boyfriend's shitbox later if you want.”

Ronan raised an eyebrow, surprised by how different he sounded, almost reasonable under the sheer mocking tone. He must have seriously fucked up, if fucking Kavinsky sounded comforting to him, but it didn't really have many options. So he got in.

There was something incredibly unsettling in his position in the passenger seat of the Mitsubishi, the lean and slouchy figure of K in the same place Gansey usually sat, with a straight back and childish excitement. It felt wrong, unreal, not like a proper nightmare but a fever dream.

They didn't say anything, Kavinsky carelessly driving without any hint of a clear direction, Ronan silently looking up at him from time to time, studying the bruised knuckles gripping the steering wheel, the exposed portion of collarbones slipping from his shirt, the way he occasionally licked his lips. He told himself that it was just a way to keep his mind off other matters, and it was, but he knew he couldn't stop, just like he knew the other had noticed. It didn't matter, anyway, nothing did, he had just wrecked his whole existence with his own hands, for no reason at all.

Occasionally, K would offer him a pill, a beer or a candy bar, always in the same order, almost like it was rehearsed. He accepted only the second, every time, though things started to get a bit confusing after the fourth, so he wasn't really sure he didn't also take a candy bar or two.

It was dark when they came back to the Pig. Ronan couldn't make out whether he had fallen asleep or simply lost track of the time, but he felt at the same time way better and incredibly worse than he had when they left.

He got out of the Mitsubishi and moved slowly towards the Camaro, a beer still in his hand, his steps paced as if he was walking on sacred land. It looked better now, less tragic and terrifying, but it didn’t make it less broken. He dragged his fingers gently over the cold metal of the roof, then over the windshield, stopping over the part of the hood that was still smooth, letting his eyes alone completing the journey to the wrecked mess in the front. Ronan felt an ache all over his body.

“You know, you can just buy him a new car.” Kavinsky pointed out, bored in a way that had a bitter and badly concealed aftertaste. He didn’t care enough to try and understand it, though, he was still mourning.

He didn't even realize the other was standing behind him until he felt his hand on one shoulder. He wanted to brush it away and he also didn't. He listened to the second voice.

“You don’t understand.” he whispered, but that was obvious, really “He loved this car. He’s never gonna forgive me.”

The annoyed breath he got in response was unnerving, but what was he expecting, really. That was Joseph Kavinsky, there was no comfort or understanding to be found there.

Ronan felt the grip tighten on his shoulder and didn’t resist the slow pull that turned him around, away from the Pig and towards Kavinsky’s empty eyes. He didn’t like it, he didn’t like that he was allowing himself the luxury to ignore his problems once again or the way that hollow stare made him feel, but he was too tired, too numb from the drinking and the pain.

“Then let go. Fuck Third. There’s plenty of spoilt nerds for you to suck on. With better cars, even.”

K probably knew it wasn’t that easy, that he could never understand that kind of bond, the fierce love he felt for Gansey, for all of his friends. He was simply showing him a way out.

He felt his finger pressing something between his lips and brushing over his tongue, the taste of his skin so strong and shocking he forgot to breathe or think or pull back. He didn’t care for drugs, he thought they were stupid and pointless, but he let K ease the pill down his throat with his own beer anyway. Then Ronan let him take his first kiss.

It was different from what he’d imagined, messy and hot and hungry. It felt like drowning and gasping for air and dying slowly. He let him take other firsts too, out in the summer air and over what was left of Gansey’s car, he let thin fingers brush over his skin, slide away his clothes, hold his arms and hips tight enough to leave marks.

It didn’t feel right. It was clumsy, rough, the pitiful result of Kavinsky's numbness coming into contact with his ache. It was mindless movement without any trace of love and he couldn't stop tasting his own shame and hypocrisy mixed with a stranger's mouth.

He felt good, for a moment, and then he didn’t feel anything at all.

\---

He couldn’t make out precisely what woke him up, but considering how reckless K’s driving was – and that was coming from him – it could have been anything from a dangerous u-turn to a hit and run. Realistically, it was probably just a sudden lane shift, but that didn’t really change how hard his heart was pounding in his chest.

Kavinsky let out a low laugh.

“’Morning, sunshine.” he whispered, his speech excessively slurred, even by his standards. Ronan raised an eyebrow and looked at the grey sky, at the neon numbers of the radio. 05:16 a.m. Something was wrong.

He lowered his window and lit up a cigarette, an ugly habit that turned out to be absolutely crucial for his nerves, when living with someone even more reckless and unpredictable than he was.

He tried to figure out where they could possibly be, that late, when he fell asleep barely twenty minutes ago thinking they were just going home. He stared attentively at the road, trying to make out at least half a sign. But finding that out didn’t help him calm down at all. Quite the contrary.

“Why the fuck are we on the goddamn interstate?” he tried hard not to shout, but he was still all over the place. Did he even need to know? Did it really matter?

Kavinsky was completely unpredictable. Maybe he wanted to go back to Jersey, maybe in Henrietta, it didn’t really change anything.

He watched him chuckle like it was nothing, because of course it was. Of course life was a big fucking joke to him. He lazily fumbled with a hand in his pocket, trying to get something out.

“Dude, calm down. Take a xan.” he mumbled, clearly struggling with his pocket, the steering wheel and the process of being awake. Ronan was tired and still drunk, but it was so obvious. He thought he was going to explode.

“Did you fucking take one? Are you seriously out of your fucking mind?” he shouted, yanking himself into being awake and sitting straight. Why did he even let him drive? He was used to this, he knew K was going to do something stupid as soon as he was left unsupervised, he knew he couldn't trust him. It didn't matter if he was standing straight when Ronan couldn't, he was still supposed to know better.

It was his fault. He chose to be with him. He chose him like this, twisted and careless, unable to spend a fucking hour without his brain being obliterated. He had loved the thrill of it, the comfort of the dark, eyes he didn't have to hide from. He loved it still and he loved him too, beautiful and dangerous and completely lost. But sometimes it was just too much. Sometimes he just felt too fucking tired.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> english is not my first language. I thought it was better to put it at the end, because I read something about your flaws being easier to percieve when you point them out beforehand. if anything sounded weird, now you know why.  
I also haven't written anything proper in a while, so I may be a lil rusty and all over the place, but I kinda like it.  
I absolutely have to thank emmalthornwood for being the sweetest and most encouraging beta that ever lived, even though we barely know eachother and she has no business being this kind to my obnoxious ass. without her this wouldn't have happened.  
I hope you liked this mess of a beginning, I liked the challenge of writing it very much.
> 
> p.s.: adam's gonna pop out in the next one and then the good things are gonna start.


	2. the fact that you're not dead yet doesn't mean that you're fine, only that you're lucky.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This one has Adam in it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> part of this chapter was hard to write. it can also be slighlty uncomfortable to read, but nothing bad happens.  
I know art forgery(?) is probably gonna be part of CDTH, but I wanted to go along with the dreaming-making art link and it felt too perfect to skip.

This time, it was clearly pain that woke him up. When he opened his eyes, the familiar post-drinking photosensitivity hit him right into his skull and he didn't have to think twice before closing them again. There was something different, though. The usual hangover pain was accompanied by a worrying, more specific ache to the side of his head. He slowly dragged his finger to his face to feel a small constellation of scratches, increasing in numbers as he got closer to his hairline only to be hidden under bandages. He didn't try to remove them but slowly felt over the cloth until he could faintly make up what was probably a big, stitched-up wound. Not even remotely interested in opening his eyes again, Ronan listened carefully to his surroundings. It was quiet in an unsettling way, the silence barely disturbed by the faint beeping of machinery. _Right_. Kavinsky had actually managed to crash the car.  


For some unknown reason fate, or god, or whoever did their duty, thought that dying drunk on the interstate because his boyfriend was an asshole was too shitty even for him, which was nice. Ronan remembered the paramedic trying to keep him awake by telling him that nobody else got hurt, which was even nicer. He also remembered that Kavinsky, half-collapsed near him – because of the Xanax, since the fucker magically got out without a scratch – didn't seem to care, but that wasn't anything out of the ordinary.

He didn't remember the collision, though, which maybe wasn't a good sign, but more realistically was just a coincidence of how shitfaced he was when it all happened. The moments leading to it were a bit more clear, however. Ronan freaking out in the passenger seat, eyes looking at the street frenetically in search of a spot to stop the car and wait around until at least one of them was sober enough to make the drive home. K still conscious enough beside him, his grip light on the steering wheel, his expression unbothered, as he didn't even know what was wrong about the situation. Ronan hadn't needed to refrain himself from shouting at him for the situation he had put both of them through, he had been too busy fearing for his life and trying to spare both of them from an early grave.

But it had been hard, even harder considering he was still drunk and confused, not to mention he had literally just woke up. So he barely had any time to check on Kavinsky, who still seemed to be able to drive in a straight line. He had turned towards him just once, in time to see his head drop to the side, together with his body, the steering wheel, and the entire car.  


He knew he was probably alone in the room, now, he didn't need to check. The police had brought in K for driving under the influence as soon as his visit was over, while Ronan was still getting his goddamn head sewn back together – the fact that he had been too drunk to properly feel every part of the process was kind of a positive thing, in that context. He let out a short breath, trying to relax on the hospital bed, but was that even possible?  


It wasn't that he got hurt. That happened often, Ronan was good at starting shit, even better when he was drunk or pissed off or the both of them combined. They also already told him that it was nothing serious, and they were barely monitoring to exclude complications. It wasn't even Kavinsky risking jail time, because he wasn't. Aggression, dealing, property violation and other countless accusations already preceded what had happened the night before, and some external connection unknown to Ronan always made sure the other never faced time or even the slightest consequence at all.

It was Kavinsky dragging them through the interstate at 5 a.m. and popping pills. It was Ronan too drunk to be awake first and helpful later. It was all the clubbing and the drinking and the drugs and everything about that life he couldn't keep up with. There was no way of going around it, at that point, they had to talk. At least, that was what he was telling himself now that he was sober, now that he could feel still feel the bruises, now that K wasn't there to cloud his judgment with sweet nihilism. Which meant that a part of him already knew this determination was not gonna last.  


He tried imagining the process of actually having a conversation, went through all the mocking, the shouting, all of it hurtful and insufferable and draining. He felt tired again but didn't try to sleep. Instead, he reached for his phone still in his pocket and slowly, painfully, opened his eyes, just enough to dial the only number he still knew by memory.  


Matthew's loud voice was both painful for his head and soothing for his nerves, and at that moment he needed it more than anything.  


"Ronan? Are you alright? The hospital called, Declan and I are-"  


"Matthew, hand me the phone."  


Declan's voice wasn't really the contribution he needed, at the moment, he especially didn't like how worried he sounded, under his usual asshole brand. Matthew sounded worried too, but he wasn't as difficult to calm down.  


Ronan closed his eyes, turning so he could lay on one side.  


"I'm okay." he whispered, in the rare and gentle tone that was strictly reserved for his younger brother "Don't pass him the phone." he added. He didn't want to talk with Declan. He never did, to be honest, but that moment was different. He felt too tired, too raw, some part of him was almost scared of his brother finding out. Luckily, Matthew didn't seem to notice.  


"Okay, I won't." he whispered back, though there was really no need for it. Probably it was just an impulse, the ghost of pranks and secrets they would share as kids. Ronan cracked a smile.  


"Good. Tell me about your day."  


\---  


The morning after wrecking the Camaro, Ronan woke up sitting shotgun in Kavinsky's car, in a different place from the night before. He was slouching uncomfortably to one side, a subtle and shameful pain taking over his lower back, his seat not even pulled down like he just couldn't wait to collapse. His memory had been hazy from the bad mixture of alcohol and drugs but he knew, his body knew, everything about him was still aching from the night before.

He breathed in, letting once again the reality of what he had done sink in: he had crashed Gansey's car and ruined their friendship forever. There was no way of going back or making it up, he had known the risk and now he had to live with the consequences. The thought of what would happen once Gansey returned was so heavy and terrifying he had to reach for the warm, half-finished beer he had left in the cupholder to take a long drink. Disgusting and necessary.  


Luckily, his mind was given a break by the even more depressing sight of Kavinsky doing coke off the casing of an old foreign-looking CD. For a moment, he asked himself how low he had to go to reach that level of bored self-destruction, where things didn't even look wrong or forbidden anymore but were just routine. Ronan felt almost sad, in a way that didn't involve pity or disgust anymore, but now had roots in his own misery. What could have he possibly done, to sink that low? Had he hurt someone so bad he couldn't go back? Had someone hurt him? That seemed unlikely. Kavinsky didn't strike him as somebody that could be hurt. There was no way of understanding were could that kind of violent rage come from. He almost wanted to try, though, which was already weird by itself.

He still found that whole sight kind of gross, though.

"Jesus, K, it's fucking noon." he pointed out, narrowing his eyelids in an attempt to look directly at him, in spite of the excessively bright sun and his particularly shitty headache.

Kavinsky laughed and he let out ad annoyed sigh, feeling suddenly self-conscious about the fact he had spent the entirety of the previous day with that man. It got worse when he remembered how easily he had let him have his way with his body, as soon as his self-control had lowered even in the slightest. Those were supposed to be special things, lovely and warm. Instead, he just felt dirty.

But maybe that was just how it was supposed to be, for him. He had never been tender or righteous or sweet, his conscience was rotten, his soul full of ashes. He had repeatedly hurt and let down everyone that loved him, so it was really a given that he didn't deserve tenderness or care.

It still didn't feel good. It felt worse when he noticed Kavinsky was looking at him.

"What the fuck do you want?"  


He felt vulnerable under his gaze. Then he realized it was completely deprived of any kind of light, and that made everything suddenly look comforting and safe. But that also made him feel sick.  


He got out, not even remotely interested in whatever he could say, then slowly looked around to figure out the location. And since the laws of the universe demanded things to be as bad as they possibly could, Ronan found out that they were at the Barns.

He had already given him everything.  


In hindsight, that was when he actually reached the point of no return. When he let Kavinsky inside his own house he led him into his world, the old shrine of Niall Lynch and Ronan's entire childhood, almost untouched since the day he found his father's open head spilling on the concrete. He probably didn't deserve to witness any of it, but it was too late and he wasn't really in the position to judge, not after wasting away something he didn't deserve too. So he just carefully looked around, feeling memories and suppressed feeling crawl under his skin.

His father had been a spectacle of art and poetry and fraud, and the Barns depicted that perfectly. The walls were lined with all kinds of paintings, of every size, period and artist, the space between them was crammed with cheesy family pictures. Only the latter were real, though.

As a painter and poet, Niall Lynch never took off. All of the Lynches' impressive riches came from his father's part-time job as an art dealer, mostly for spoilt heirs and wannabe connoisseurs, with the occasional donations to museums and galleries, just to better frame his image as a patron of the arts.

What the buyers and grateful receivers didn't know, was that those were also his father's works. Ronan had spent hours watching his father paint, every time with a different story and art movement and name: an outrageously unknown Da Vinci's pupil, a famous french impressionist, a raw Weimar God. His strokes were always precise and calculated, his works perfect and believable down to the smallest detail, with curated backstories made of feigned certificates, antique photos displaying the artifacts and outrageously believable preparatory sketches made on thousand years old paper. Everything was his father's doing, while his own works went purposefully unnoticed and Ronan was showered by him with praise for every book corner, paper towel and plain surface he had stained with sketched and portraits and things from his dreams.

Ronan loved and feared every part of it.  


But Kavinsky didn't look impressed, or upset, or even awake. He didn't care for any of the family pictures or intricate paintings, in fact, it almost looked like he was avoiding them on purpose and he probably was. Probably, he was constantly running away, from everyone and everything and himself.  


So Ronan started running with him, in the passenger seat of his car. He ran from Monmouth with all of his things in the trunk of the Mitsubishi, he ran from school and Gansey and God. He learned to lay back and get drunk and close his eyes to go through countless bad parties and bad nights and bad side effects.

Around the same time, Declan told him that somebody was out to get them and, while he strongly questioned his company, he did though that running away wasn't that bad of an idea. He and Matthew went first. He would have fought to stay, once, but he had no reason now, he didn't have friends or a home but ghosts and a perfect place to leave. Kavinsky didn't care, he could deal and ruin teenagers' brains wherever he was.

On the day following Ronan's eighteen birthday, they ran from Henrietta altogether.  


\---

When he opened his eyes again, he wasn't alone in the room anymore. Matthew was sitting beside him, his fingers restlessly drumming on the mattress as he silently hummed a tune to match, his gaze lost somewhere outside the window, while Declan used his best politician voice to talk to a doctor. Ronan noticed he was wearing jeans and a sweater, instead of his usual suit, which meant the news had probably reached him early in the morning, in the comfort of his own home, and he hadn't even thought about looking like his most elegant and charming self.  


He was addicted to hating his older brother and made things as hard as they could be for him, but the thought of Declan restless and worried behind the wheel still made him feel like shit.

When he turned, he also noticed that his hair was mostly unkempt, a couple of dark curls falling on his face. His eyes made something in his guts burn.  


"Good, you're awake. Which mean you can finally explain what the fuck were you doing on the interstate at fucking five in the morning. Drunk, I presume." he declared, his tone cold but still unable to conceal how mad and upset he was.

Normally, Ronan would have showered him in insults, belittling his attempt at scolding and mocking his self-established authority. But he was just too old and too much in the wrong not to look like a pathetic manchild, so he just turned away from his gaze and stared at the ceiling instead.

He could have just blamed Kavinsky, really. He was the one xaned out behind the wheel, Ronan wasn't driving or even conscious at all when the whole thing happened, but they both knew that wasn't the point. He had been K's enabler for years, now, a passive witness of the ruin he brought to others and himself, a silent accomplice of every crime and dip into the abyss. He had pocketed his own morals for a chance with someone that couldn't judge him, for a love that didn't require effort or accountability. He clung to his lost cause with all of his strength, no matter how wrong or destructive it was, how bloody and bruised it left him.  


So he just didn't answer, taking one of Matthew's hands between his own to silently play with, thinking about how big it had gotten, how small and soft it once was. But Declan wasn't one to just let go, not when he had fucked up this bad. For how much his brother hated Niall, it was obvious that he couldn't let go of his personal rendition of the father role.  


He leaned over him, grabbing him by the chin and forcing his head upwards. Ronan still didn't look.  


"Jesus fucking Christ, Ronan, fucking look at me. You're not a child anymore, this is getting out of control." he struggled not to shout, angry and alarmed in a way that he had never heard before.  


Everything was just too much. Declan's words, Matthew's worried and unusual silence, the air heavy and unpleasant and suffocating. He couldn't stand it anymore.  


Ronan yanked way his brother's hand and the wire still connecting him to the monitor, then ran through the hall and outside the hospital. As he lit a cigarette, he noticed his hands were shaking, so he shoved both of them in his pockets.  


"I don't know what you have under there, but I hardly think smoking would help, Lynch."  


His entire body froze. That just couldn't be. It was different, more mature, the charming southern accent skillfully concealed, its tone colder than it had ever been, but he knew that voice. Ronan had loved it and dreamed it and feared its judgment as he did God's.

He wanted to run as fast as he could, once again. But he also wanted to turn so bad his soul hurt.  


So he did, and Adam Parrish was right there, completely different and exactly the same as he remembered him. He was slightly taller, his frame somehow firmer, the lines in his face hardened. He looked more confident, in a way, elegantly wrapped in a pale blue collared shirt, his back straight and his slender arms crossed over his chest. His eyes were still tired. That didn't make him any less breathtaking.

The cigarette dropped from his lips.  


"Parrish? What the fuck-" he stuttered, too shocked and unprepared not to lose his mind. He wasn't supposed to be here, it didn't make sense. "What the fuck are you doing here?"  


He didn't look half as surprised as Ronan was, so he probably already knew. He also wasn't half as terrified, but Adam hadn't spent the latest years running away from everything regarding his past. Not the way he had, at least.

He shrugged, furrowing his brows and planting those beautiful and merciless eyes of his right into his soul. He looked confused, more than pissed off, as he was still trying to understand why he'd come or how he felt about it.  


"I'm researching my thesis. I read about the crash on the news, thought I'd take the chance to see how you were doing." he explained, conflicted but sincere. He was clearly mad at him, but even more clearly not as mad as he wanted to be. Maybe a part of him was worried too.  


He still wanted to run away. He also didn't. He raised one eyebrow, hinting a sly smile that was incredibly inappropriate, considering the messed up way things had ended. But that was just how his body responded to Adam, he couldn't help it.  


"And how am I doing?" he asked, sarcastic and still inappropriate, but it was either that or panicked silence.

The other didn't like it, but he didn't get angry either, which was good. He just sighed and looked away, as if ashamed of something. Maybe him. Probably him.  


"Worse then I thought. But you somehow managed to stay alive, so not that bad." Adam replied. He was nervous, he noticed, probably troubled by whatever thought his mind was currently overprocessing.  


Ronan didn't know what else to say. He wanted to ask about him, about his thesis, which college he had gotten into, what his new life looked light. He wanted to know if he still slept five hours at best and whipped out tarot cards in the middle of the night to clear out his mind, if whatever new friends and colleagues and professors he had now knew he was beautiful and special and a force of nature, if they stupidly and mindlessly loved him for it. But he didn't have the right to ask anything at all.  


He just watched him in silence, instead, observing the cogs of his mind working in an almost visible way, carefully weighing his options, his emotions, whether it was reasonable enough. When he looked up again he almost startled him. Then he handed him a cellphone.  


"I don't have your number. I have to go now, but I'm here until Friday. We can get coffee or something, if you're not too busy trying to kill yourself."  


Ronan expected every possible set of words except for that particular one. He felt both slightly relieved and unforgivably guilty. He was a mess, it was all a mess, but the mere thought of seeing Adam again, for whatever reason, made his soul feel lighter. He didn't hate him. He was mad and disappointed, but he didn't hate him.  


He carefully took his phone and typed in his number, then handed it back. Adam nodded as he put it back in his pocket, righteous and perfect and slightly pleased. His gaze lingered on Ronan again, conflicted, a feeling he couldn't comprehend reflected in his eyes.

He slowly parted his lips to say something, then shook his head.  


"Please answer." he whispered without looking, then left.

Ronan watched him walk away. It felt like a dream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have to thank the cool kidz in the discord chat for actually putting up with me while I bitched and moaned throughout the entire process of writing the middle part of this chapter, for reading the first draft and helping me push through. I really don't deserve any of them. I also have to thank and curse by best friend, because her evil Kavinsky is also my evil Kavinsky and she also sit through the horrible first draft even though she doesn't like reading in English at all.  
I also have to thank everyone who left kudos and comment on the previous chapter, cuz this bitch need that sweet sweet approval from everyone all the time.  
I hope you're enjoying this so far!


	3. you can bury the ashes, but it really won't stop you from choking on the smoke.

Blue was supposed to be the "plain" one in her family, the only non-psychic child in a crowd of women so incredibly gifted it was honestly insane, but, somehow, she always managed to call Adam at the appropriate time, when he needed clarity or company or simply somebody he could trust to just listen while he tried not to freak out. This, to him, was something that a psychic would probably be able to do.

Or maybe he just had an incredibly sweet, insanely smart and too considerate best friend.

Whatever the reason was, he knew he needed to hear from her that morning and she somewhat _had _to feel it too, because her name lit up on his phone, on the small table of his b&b, following what had been a pretty normal good morning text.

"Hello, gorgeous." the tone of her voice was high in a slightly bitter way, but it was still lowkey enough that he didn't worry about it. It was also morning, so that had to be taken into account.

"Hi, Blue. Is everything alright?" he asked quietly, squeezing his phone between his cheek and shoulder so that he could both stir his coffee and hold his piece of toast at the same time.

"It very much isn't. Your friend ol' Dickie Dick just _had _to keep me up until three a.m."

"Did he, now?" he interrupted, knowing that wasn't the case at all, with Gansey and especially with finals close by. But he was determined to have her crack up at least a smile, to chase the crankiness away even a little.

"Oh shut up." she struggled to keep it together, then let out a small chuckle.

He smiled, absolutely pleased with his accomplishment, then took a sip from his coffee.

"Are you going to work now?"

"Was it my non-existent will to face retail that gave it away?"

"Kinda. My watch also."

"Always the snitch." she whispered, causing him to laugh just enough to risk spilling his coffee all over the table. He temporarily placed the cup down again. "Did you have breakfast?"

"I'm on it right now."

"Good."

He smiled again, feeling something extremely sweet and warm deep down in his chest. Blue had a subtle and resilient way of caring for him, something that never failed to make him feel loved and worthy without guilting him down. He took another sip of coffee and breathed in, trying to make peace with the words, before saying them.

"I saw Ronan yesterday."

Blue fell silent for a bit. Adam could perfectly imagine the thought process she was going through, it was more or less the same for both of them.

Ronan Lynch hadn't been a conversation for years, now, but he was once, between Adam and Blue at least. When one of a fierce group of five friends just randomly decided to bail on all of them, leaving them to find his empty room and a broken car with no explanation after an already shitty weekend, you kind of had to talk about it. So they had, and even if both of them had their fair share of problems with Ronan and each other, they had secretly tried to understand the puzzle of his disappearance for months.

They knew about what happened to the Camaro, everyone did, but they still couldn't wrap their heads around it. It didn't feel right or even true, that Ronan could be gone. There had to be something else to it, something that could make sense of the sudden loss of someone they both loved more than they had anticipated.

But there really wasn't. Eventually, the Lynches left Henrietta and they gave up on their quest to find the meaning behind the mystery. The bad thing was that things never properly came back to what they were before. The good one was that both Adam and Blue got so invested in the process of grieving, they easily patched up whatever aching wound was left in their relationship from the breakup and found themselves with something stronger and longlasting.

So, Adam knew what kind of reaction to expect and Blue knew feelings were sometimes ugly and complicated.

"Was he at the hospital?" she asked, clearly too conflicted for her tone to be anything but plain. That question surprised him for a moment only.

Of course, she had to know, _Gansey_ had to know. It wasn't even the fact that the crash had been a big thing – and it had been, gloriously dangerous on the side of an interstate, a rumoured Bulgarian mobster's son high on every possible substance available behind the wheel – he could just perfectly picture his friend reading the news regarding New York, every day since the voice started spreading around back home, too mad and numb to call but not enough to ignore the constant worry for someone he had once so desperately loved. He probably still did.

"Yes. Did Gansey tell you?"

"Barely. I think he tried not to, but just couldn't avoid it." she whispered, sounding a little more tired, now, before slowly breathing out "How is he?"

"Not that bad. I think he hurt his head or something, nothing serious."

"And?" her voice was careful. Soft.

He knew Blue wouldn't have let him off with that. They were better than 3-am-worried-rampage Gansey at concealing and processing their feelings, but Ronan used to be their friend too. They were perfectly capable of feeling the desire to punch him and worry about him at the same time.

"I don't know, Blue, it was weird." he murmured, looking at his trembling reflection in the dark liquid. He thought about the previous day, the freaked out look Ronan had in his eyes, the way he had sprinted out of the hospital while Adam was looking for his room, the small but perceptible tremor in hands. It had left him feeling heavy. "He looked tired."

_And defeated. And scared. And lost._

"You have to be, if you spend your life on Kavinsky's ongoing party train." she muttered, after a brief pause clearly needed to at least sound more bitter than she was sad "Was fuckface there too?"

"I don't think he was. He must have been still in custody."

"Was he, now. They want us to believe the rich white boy is going to jail for real, huh?"

"It was a big incident. It got on the news."

"You don't really believe that."

"True. I don't. He's probably already out talking to a lawyer."

Blue almost violently sighed in his ear, then stayed silent for a bit.

"Are you meeting him?"

It almost made him feel uncomfortable how easy it was for her to read right through him. Adam had sent Ronan a text the night before, barely stating time and place, still completely uncertain about the appropriate way to deal with him.

"Maybe. He hasn't responded yet."

"That's Ronan Lynch for you."

They both quietly laughed, but it was a pitiful thing, sad and nostalgic.

\---

Adam hadn't always been worried about him, to be honest. There had been a time when everything was still too fresh and raw for him to be everything but mad.

That was when he saw what Ronan had done to the Pig for the first time. The 1973 Camaro was a beautiful, stubborn car, but more than all of that, it was something that Gansey loved, their personal spaceship and meetup point and the vessel that brought them to buy food at ungodly hours or lose themselves in the depth of the forest, laughing and careless. It was a part of them, it had been from the first day, and now it was just a mess of metal and broken hearts.

Adam had felt something inside him _sink_ watching it, but seeing Gansey's reaction was worse, his bewilderment that turned slowly into numbness, the defeat almost palpable in his stance. He had looked at the car wearily, tracing his fingers through the dusty metal, his eyes distant, like he was thinking about something else entirely. And he was.

Adam knew it wasn't _just _about the car. It was about trust, about Gansey asking Ronan not to be stupid about it and then finding out he had run off with it as soon as he had left the keys unsupervised. It was the way he had said _"Ronan never took my car" _and believed it, because he didn't think he would ever have reason not to, because that was Ronan and he trusted him and believed in him and Gansey already had done everything he could to try and help him, fix him, make him feel whole. And that had been Ronan's response. Mean, cowardly, impossibly raw. Adam almost could hear it, or at least, he could hear the version of it the other was making up in his mind, which probably wasn't true but hurt anyway. That was all they were left with, after all.

Ronan didn't leave a note or text or any kind of message. He just disappeared before they even came back from D.C., leaving only the wrecked corpse of the Camaro and an empty, gutted space where his room once was, everything suddenly vanished, like it wasn't even there to begin with. All throughout the summer, they heard rumors about him hanging out at Kavinksy's parties, sitting shotgun in his Mitsubishi, like that was a thing that could just randomly happen. They knew he wouldn't come back to school, but still silently hoped for it to happen, just to understand, just to see let the reality of it sink in, but he never returned.

Adam never thought he could feel heartbroken about it, yet he did. And it was bad, too, because what they had was different. Because he had let himself believe it could have been more. They had unfinished business, something that Ronan had set up with prolonged gazes that had sunk under his skin, with smiles and jokes and big gestures he so skilfully hid, Adam hadn't noticed until they were gone.

They had a non-spoken contract made of sarcastic comments and sly smile, a carefully choreographed way of tiptoeing around each other, always too close, never enough to burn. But it did burn after he was gone. It burned when after sleepless nights and tense silent moments, Adam had to fight himself off of the need of thinking it was real after Ronan's eyes had pushed for him to believe it was. It burned when he almost thought it could have happened, that he could be seen for what he was and, somehow, even loved for it. All of it just to watch everything burn to ashes in one moment as the Mitsubishi passed by, one day, and Ronan was there. Savagely handsome, fearless, lovable Ronan, laying on the passenger seat, his forehead touching Kavinsky's shoulder so naturally that it felt like a knife right through the gut. Adam couldn't think or breathe anymore.

He hadn't realized Ronan had been his safe space up until that moment. Now someone else was enjoying the dark with him.

\---

He didn't really think Ronan would show up. If anything, he was quite sure of the opposite, as everyone would in his place, after three years of running away from all of them like one would only flee the might of death penalty. Seeing it like that made Adam feel bad about being hurt, about being mad, about throwing Ronan off his balance completely. That didn't last long, though. Ronan had chosen to run off, as he had chosen to steal Gansey's car for whatever reason. His balance was made of partying and drinking and who knew what kind of other synthetic getaways, it led to him risking his life in a car at five in the morning and there wasn't really anything about that to be worth keeping.

Adam had the right to be mad and hurt, to demand any sort of explanation for the way the people he so fiercely loved had to go through pain and grief because of him. That didn't stop him from feeling his own guts twisting inside his body as soon as Ronan walked him. He could have ignored easily every kind of personal grudge, pain or heartbreak residue, but not the human ache he felt when he met his gaze, dark circles under his eyes, the beautiful pale blue of his irises too dull with restlessness to burn as fearsome as it once had.

Ronan Lynch was a class A asshole, breaker of promises, traitors of friends, boyfriend to an awful and dangerous individual and more than all of that, a coward. But now, as he sat across from him at the table, he only looked like a lost boy. He looked tired, maybe skinnier than he had noticed the day before, a black cap pulled over his head to cover bandages and god knew what disastrous future scar but still couldn't conceal half of the smaller bruises. How lonesome he looked, that man so hard to know but harder to let go of. For how long had he been pulling it off? How much fucked up shit did he had to fold up and forget just to keep going, to pretend like he knew where he was headed?

Once, Adam had found troublesome the process of witnessing Ronan Lynch. The whole might of him kept setting him off, how exaggerate he was, how mean and cynical, how quick to snap and judge and riot. Adam had recognized his own silhouette in that fearsome creature as in a funhouse mirror, so similar and still different, extremely loud where he was quiet, full of love and money and potential left to waste where he had dust and dust and dust and determination. Both of them so lost, so impossible to touch and understand.

It was terrifying how unchanged that had remained, in different ways and places and things to grieve.

  


It took a while, a couple of lingering stares and a minute of fingers drumming on the table but, unexpectedly, Ronan spoke first. Adam figured it made sense, after all, he wasn't the one that had randomly detached himself from every one, without having any idea about where they had ended up. Also, news traveled fast about whatever kind of mess Kavinsky was putting himself into and Ronan with him.

It wasn't about any of that, though, he looked too guilty even to be able to ask questions, too weary, almost defensive. He was probably just restless, too stressed out by Adam's stare, too eager to let the awkward silence go. That also didn't feel like him at all. The Ronan he knew dominated silence, he would never be intimidated by it. But he also didn't have any reason to actually feel the kind of guilt that made silence uncomfortable.

"I didn't think you would come." he muttered, in the end, looking him straight in the eyes. That did feel more like someone he knew, straight to the point, not afraid of asking uncomfortable questions and give unchangeable answers. A part of him suddenly reminded Adam how much he had missed him. I wasn't the point.

Because that was also an incredibly shitty question. A hypocrite. Of course, he would come. He wasn't the one that had ran away leaving no explanation. Ronan had been considerate, once, now he was too busy wasting away.

That gave him the strength to collect himself and remember exactly why and how he was mad.

"Why would you?" he asked, then, calm and composed, like his eyes hadn't become immediately hungry the moment he'd noticed the dark lines of a new tattoos on his knuckles, curious, eager to know more.

Maybe he shouldn't have come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> once again, I have to thank the wonderful 37 gfs of the screeming server. it's rotten work having anything at all to do with me and helping me out. I'm runnining on one botched hour of sleep, so this might feel weird. this is also a bit on the shorter side but who cares. I hope you like it anyway! kudos and comments are really really appreciated!


	4. stop burning bridges, it is not keeping you warm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> some slightly worse thing are mentioned here, regarding sexual abuse and non-consensual drug assumption. it's not graphic or even shown at all, but those things can be triggering for some and I'd better be safe than sorry.

Adam's eyes were merciless. Ronan felt them burning under his skin, sinking through the depths of his flesh to soak up his bones, lingering, corrosive. He didn't worry about whether or not he was comfortable with it, which was fair: Ronan, after all, had been the first to use stares both as a weapon and a mean of courtship, although a very unsuccessful one. To be honest, he would have found it even flattering, had it come in another moment in time, one that didn't involve him feeling guilty and distant and estranged. No, flattering was an understatement: it would have been absolute heaven. 

But that was not the way he wanted to be looked at. Adam's eyes were wary, careful, like he was constantly weighing down the creaks on his skin, the sins pending over his head, the circle under his eyes with all the stories they told. It was different and brushed on his skin like a winter breeze, distant and unforgiving where the summer sun had once been gently warming up his soul. The bad part was that he actually deserved it. He had every possible reason to be mad, to be weary, to look at him as if he were a stranger, because he was. He didn't even trust himself with the idea of putting together who he could be. 

He followed his eyes all the way to his hands and shame hit him with a quick sting, as he followed the wobbly dark letters staining his fingers. NITEMARE. Hardly the only bad decision he had to carry on his skin indefinitely, luckily the only one Adam would ever be able to see. Ronan didn’t know how he found the strength to look him in the eyes once again, but he was looking back, slightly pissed off, waiting.

Oh, right. He had asked him a rhetorical question to balance out his nonsensical and shitty one. He just shrugged. It was obvious, to him, why Adam could have decided not to come. There were thousands of reasons for everyone who ever met him not to see him again, to be honest. But that wasn't the point, now. The point was the awkward silence that was settling between them, the coffee table incredibly small, their legs too close under it. It was uncomfortable in a sad way, not a sweet dangerous lingering but as if touching him would burn through both of them like acid. 

A waiter passed by to leave both of their orders, giving Ronan an excuse to indulge in that horrible atmosphere that was, however, still easier to sustain than any kind of talking would have, no matter how terrified the thought of whatever Adam hid behind his eyes was. He took a long, slow sip from his coffee, hiding away behind his mug just enough to find some form of relief. It was short-lived. As he looked up again, Adam was still looking at him, calm and composed, his expression hardened, as if he'd suddenly remembered why they had come. Ronan straightened his posture, like a child expecting to be scolded. What an idiot. 

He watched the elegant and subtle way he tilted his head to the side, pointing to the general direction of the bruised on his head and face.

“Is it bad?” he asked. He didn’t sound alarmed, or mad, or pitiful. It was just a question. Ronan liked it a lot.

“Well, it did mess up my hair real bad.” he whispered, letting a hint of a smile casually cross his lips. He knew that wasn't the kind of response Adam was expecting. He also knew he didn’t want to tell him that, yes, it 

The cut was big and had been far from clean, it crawled from the temple halfway to the side of his skull in all its crooked glory. It was going to make for an ugly scar, but Ronan was okay with it. After bashing his head into the window and probably almost leaving a good chunk of his brain matter on the asphalt, he really wasn't in the position to complain. It was a miracle he was still conscious and breathing. 

It wasn’t that good for conversation, though.

Adam didn’t mind the bad joke. In fact, Ronan was pretty sure he had seen him almost crack a smile, before pulling it back and shaking his head. But the damage had already been done, at that point. Adam had almost laughed at his shitty comment. The atmosphere suddenly loosened. Ronan felt like he could breathe for the first time since he’d gotten in.

“This is not funny.” he uttered. But the fact that he was acknowledging the joke already meant it actually was. Or at least, that the idea of jokes being appropriate was now a pre-existing condition again.

It felt too easy, almost, but he took the chance anyway. He didn't even have a reason for it. He couldn't come back, he couldn't make peace with the others. Adam probably didn't even live there but, still, he needed him to accept him back into his grace. Even as the most distant of acquaintances, even to never hear from him again. He needed that distinct, uncorrupted light even in a far, small drawer of his life. Because everything else was too dark and crumbling to even pretend it was still somehow working. 

He slowly tilted his head to the side, showing him what was still a moderately tame cocky smile.

“Whatever.”

He shrugged, still high on that small, shiny hope of connecting again. Somehow, it had made him braver, lighter, like he was borrowing the skin of a Ronan past. It was eerily enjoyable, but he pretended not to notice.

What he did notice, however, was Adam averting his gaze, just for a moment, before reminding himself of whatever power stance he had decided. It was fine, though, it still felt incredibly familiar. And everything about him was lingering for any familiarity at all.

He watched him, now, carefully and curious, wary of every change, every odd detail he might have acquired while out of his reach. He analyzed the way his chest rose as he breathed, the lovely knot of his eyebrows as he thought up the question. So beautiful, so simple. It felt like home. 

He noticed he was worried, now. More than he was mad, or confused, or upset, the boy who worked three jobs and studied his ass off without leaving even an entire moment as a teenager, was worried about him. It didn’t make sense. It also made him feel so guilty he could pinpoint exactly where the feeling sat in his guts.

Adam leaned slightly towards him, resting both of his hands on the table. So elegant. So restless.

“How did it happen?”

Now, that was a shitty question. Not in itself: he had avoided it in every possible way since the moment he was pulled out of the car and on the stretcher, without it requiring any particular effort. But it was different if it was Adam asking. He couldn't just avoid it, let alone lie. 

But that was a small price for allowing himself to exist in his eyes again. Truth used to be his only currency.

He let his fingers drum quietly on the wooden surface of the table, more restless than usual, after two days without smoking. It was bad for letting tissue heal and scar, the doctor had said. And also had Adam. Ronan doubted he would have lasted long, once Kavinsky got out, but he could still try, for as childish as it was.

“How could it happen. K was driving home, I was asleep, the fucker decided to pop a fucking Xanax on the interstate.” he explained, as brief and quick as he could, as if not talking about it made it less depressing, less real.

It sure as hell wasn’t enough to fool Adam, which now looked at him like a distressed substitute teacher, lips pressed together, brows slightly furrowed. He didn’t know what to do with him, he realized. He was too closed not to worry about it, too far to actually do something. For a moment, he saw him lean forward a bit more, like he was going to either jump him or get into a very personal talk. Then he changed his mind.

“Why are you even hanging out with Kavisky?”

It was almost a whisper, heavy and almost fatigued, like he had been struggling with the words for months. It surprised him.

Everything regarding Kavisky was so obvious, to him, it never even crossed his mind that the others could think anything at all about it. It was a plain story of "fuckup meets even bigger fuckup". It was easy, it made sense. Why 

wouldn't he hang out with K? They were both made of the same cheap, unusable stuff. 

Ronan just looked down to his coffee and shrugged. Somehow, that made him feel ashamed.

He took a long sip from his mug, then looked up at Adam again. Now he just looked sad. Defeated. Tired. He sighed heavily and shook his head again. 

“I don’t get it. I thought you were smarter than this. We all did.” he whispered, slow and heavy. Ronan felt the weight of every word in a landslide over his chest.

Gansey, tired and worried, materialized in a corner of his mind. The thought of him hurt so much he thought he was gonna choke. He needed a shot of vodka in his goddamn coffee.

He wanted to make a joke, defuse the situation. He also wanted to tell him he was wrong, they all were, Ronan was exactly this, nothing smarter or better or brighter. He also wanted to run away and disappear. He shrugged again, too numb from the pain to be mocking or try to make up excuses. But Adam was calm and perfectly calculated.

"You don't have to explain to me what you did, or what you're doing, or why, but please, at least try. It doesn't have to be like this." his words were velvety and sweet, made to soothe his wounds and lead him back home. But he just couldn't. 

“And how could it be, then? What the fuck should I do?” he hissed, straightening his back and tilting his head upward, in a pathetic attempt to be mean, intimidating. But he was just exhausted, tired of running and not being awake.

Adam saw right through him.

“Just stop. Calm down.

Maybe come home.”

\---

He stayed at Kavinky's place, after leaving Monmouth. He really couldn't say they were  _staying_ , though, since they barely spent there the time they needed to sleep and recover from drinking and racing and sometimes doing drugs he really didn't want to do. 

It was a weird place. Ronan knew rich, he knew luxurious and classic old money, cold and over-equipped new money, the weird and absolutely charming middle ground of the Barns where he grew up. He knew those weren't the only options, but those were the kind he had the chance to witness, as a teenager wealthy enough to consider it a basic commodity, more than an exception. 

Kavisky's mansion was something entirely different, so lavish and exaggerate it somehow felt cheap. The huge rooms filled with every kind of luxurious ornament were empty, the marble was cold and uncomfortable under his bare feet. 

It was too big, too aggressively decorated, packed to the brim with eccentric furnishing and expensive antiquities and high tech no one was using. Everything was mismatched, old and new, velvet and steel, modern prints and rare china plates, all coming into collision with one another.

Ronan was used to weird, the Barns were an odd rural masterpiece where everything was old and sweet until it broke down and was replaced by something new and shiny, with a small replica of Da Vinci’s  _Annunciazione _ sitting just above the hi-fi stereo, between a Christmas family portrait and an adorable picture of Matthew taking a bath. But it was a sweet kind of weird, it was joyous and quirky and lovely, it meant they were all too busy living and having fun to care.

Kavinsky's house just looked like the results of multiple desperate buying rampages, sudden drug-induced changes and horror vacui. It felt wrong, uncomfortable to look at. 

His mother was also kind of uncomfortable to look at, or so he thought during the rare times he actually found himself in the same room with her for more than a handful of minutes. 

Like the rest of the house, something about her felt off, over-done, empty. She swayed around the house at odd hours, fully dressed, with makeup half-melting and messy hair, a ghost haunting her own home. She was always nice to them, her voice raspy and sweet, almost charming in how out of it she was. She smiled at Ronan and asked him how he was doing every time they passed each other, sometimes more than once. He always attempted to smile back and answered politely, thinking about Aurora Lynch, remembering her kind eyes even when looking at the empty stare of the woman in front of him. 

Sometimes he heard her screaming and breaking things in the middle of the night. He never actually found traces of the aftermath, though like it had been just a dream. Kavinksy only acknowledged her to dismiss her, she never complained. 

K was still the weirdest, most uncomfortable part of his house, with a gun permanently stashed in the drawer of his bedside table and his entire cinema dedicated to porn. That was also the place where they spent most of their time at the house, though they didn't have a reason for it, to be honest: Ronan sure as hell wasn't interested and Kavinsky never watched. Maybe he just enjoyed the background noise. 

His room was just for sleeping and sex, and the latter only because Ronan felt uncomfortable doing it anywhere else in the house, with the whole “mother roaming around” thing. Kavinsky still tried all the time anyway.

Sometimes K was sober, and those were the best and weirdest parts. It never lasted very long, an hour or two in the morning when he was still too tired and burned out from the day before, a couple of minutes late at night when they were still catching their breath tangled in each other, short from falling asleep. Ronan liked it a lot.

He was quiet, focused, even though on something far off he couldn't reach. His voice was still raspy and he was far from well-spoken, but he had a way of enunciating every word like it carried a physical weight that made him look surprisingly charming, even if those words were just “ _pass me the light_ ” or “ _hell if I fucking know, Ronan_ ". He also called him by his name often, which Ronan didn't even know he could like that much until he actually did it. 

He looked tired and careful, like he was expecting something to explode at all time, from every direction. He touched him in a different way when he was like this, letting his chin rest on his shoulder, gently brushing his fingers over his arms and back like he was petting a cat or caressing a pricey collectible. To Ronan, starving for touch and love and physical contact, they were a blessing. He also liked to touch him in return, in other moments and ways, holding his hand under the kitchen table and gently stroking his hair in the forgiving dark of the night. 

Every morning, he looked at this painfully awake version of Kavinsky, slouching over a coffee machine with a cigarette already lit between his lips, and felt like he was witnessing something incredible and private. He wasn’t nice, or kind, or funny in every way that didn’t have a mean undertone, but he was  _there_ . He struggled under the weight of the sunlight the same way he did, his head clouded with bad dreams and bad memories and sin, a darkened soul impossible to wash. Ronan, for the first time, had company in his misery. 

He was also the only one who had witnessed the rare miracle of Kavinsky’s sobriety. That shouldn’t have made him feel special, but it had. K bared a tiny part of his soul every morning and every night for Ronan and Ronan only. It was something entirely his and it felt like a reward, something unique, that made him better than anyone else.

Of course, it wasn't any of that. Sober Kavinsky still let fentanyl pills "slip" into his coffee, he still touched him even if he asked him not to, still tried to slide inside his body when Ronan was too tired to understand or  _want_ .

But he was too busy falling in love with an idea to notice that everything was covered in red flags as if they were tapestry.

\---

Kavinsky looked like hell. He always looked kind of bad, like one would expect from a twenty-something drug dealer with his fair share of addictions and a fucked up sleep schedule. He was too thin for his build, with bad skin and excessively dark under eyes, a general complexion that made him look half dead all of the time. But he was considerably worse, now: his bottom lip was split perfectly in the middle by a dark cut, while a dark bruise just under his eye made the small tattoo over his cheekbone almost invisible. He also looked like he hadn't slept in days, which he probably had, and was experiencing every kind of withdrawal known to man, which he probably was. 

Ronan hadn’t expected him to look good, however. After all, he  _was _ bailing him out of jail, where he highly doubted he could attract any kind of positive attention, with his overall horrible character and constant shit-eating grin. 

He still felt guilty, though, in the wrong way he did every time something bad happened to K while he wasn't there. Except that he spent most of the time that took Kavinsky to get the shit kicked out of him at the hospital, getting stitches into his skull, because of him. So, for a moment, he felt strong enough to be pissed off at him. Then, as they walked out of the station and Ronan was working on his accountability-holding abilities, the fucker put an arm around his shoulders and smiled. 

His teeth were entirely covered with blood. How recent was it? Had it happened that morning? Maybe when Ronan was talking to Adam, or taking a shower, or arguing with Declan to leave the hospital. He knew he was good at bringing trouble on himself, he could have avoided it. So he began feeling like shit again. As usual.

“Did you miss me, handsome?" he asked, making Ronan question for the thousandth time how could someone make even the slightest compliment feel like a parody of itself. It was like he had some kind of talent in making life his bad joke. 

“What the fuck happened to your face?”

“I’ll take it as a yes.” he sneered, the usual sly smile made a little more bitter and psychotic by the fact he was sober.

He didn't say anything, looking at him warily for a moment, before turning towards the road to call a cab. 

Thank god, it didn't take long before they could get into on. As soon as it started, Kavinsky leaned in to kiss him. He let him do it for a moment, then pulled back.

"Jesus, K, can't you fucking wait until we get home? You are still bleeding." he whispered, not surprised but slightly more annoyed than usual by his shitty ways. 

He clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, then laid back on the seat. He was less resilient sober. Or, at least, he was in a less chaotic way, so Ronan only had to deal with his hand slowly moving over his leg, which still pissed him off but not enough to ignite an explosive reaction. Ronan watched his slender fingers move over the dark fabric of his jeans and realized there was something different about him. There was nothing particularly unusual about the situation, yet something was wrong, He felt it everywhere, in his bones, boiling in his blood. He was always irritable but now he felt jumpy, upset, ready to snap.

Maybe he had hit his head too hard and was slowly going insane. That would explain Adam coming to him the day before, sitting across from him a couple of hours earlier, filling him in on his life and college and sometimes laughing at his jokes. 

Or maybe he had just hit his head, and it was Kavinsky's fault. Maybe he hadn't apologized, or asked about it, or even remotely acknowledged it. Maybe Adam  _had _ shown up to see if he was alright and even the day after, to catch up, to try and build something from the ashes Ronan had left, to help him out and save his soul. Maybe he just wanted K to say or do anything at all that didn’t involve sex or drugs or laughing at life.

He let him kiss him anyway when they got back to their apartment. His mouth tasted like blood in a way that almost made him gag, but he endured it and patched him up after. He felt his own unrest crawl under his skin as he pressed the damp cloth over Kavisky's lips, then under his eye. His blood was boiling, his throat struggling to hold back every word and complaint and scream. 

He stared at his empty eyes, asking himself if he was worried, if he had ever been throughout that entire process or their life together as a whole. They looked back at him, burning something deep inside his soul. It was love, overbearing and terrifying. It was also pure rage. He was tired. 

He didn’t know how much more he could take.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was both easy and difficult to write, because it came out fast but I didn't enjoy part of the process. I really hope I didn't make Kavinsky more charming that he should be, I don't want to romanticize any of this but barely show it by the prospective of someone that is living it.  
I hope you're liking it this far! the feel good chapters will come soon, I swear. it's a process. I hhave to thank the screeming gfs again, especially the wonderful ej (octoberfeeling) who proposed the (bad) NITEMARE tatto and michelle (clawsnbeak) and em (EmmaLThornwood) for helping me decide. special mention to my best friend and soulmate that still gives me feedback even though he is shown the first and worst draft. their support literally keeps me going.


	5. things actually do get easier, if you stop constantly fighting yourself.

Ronan didn’t know if he was supposed to be at the club that night. No, to be honest, he perfectly knew he _wasn’t_. He was recovering from a goddamn head injury, one that required ad ungodly amount of medications just to keep him going and was the result of a bad car crash, one caused by his still to be-processed boyfriend. When he'd given that answer to Kavinsky's proposal, though, the latter had just raised an eyebrow and specified with a mocking grin that they were going to take an Uber on the way home. 

Honestly, he still didn’t know why he accepted. Something that to do with how difficult it was to say no to K, to stay home knowing he was out drinking and selling drugs and doing them without anyone to check on him and make sure he didn't kill himself in the process. It was also linked to the fact that he made always sure to get himself arrested, beaten up or injured in any kind of way every time Ronan wasn't there with him. Sometimes, he thought it was done on purpose, to punish him. But the implications of something like that were just too difficult and heavy for him to sustain.

That night he really had all of the reasons to stay home, though. He wasn't supposed to drink and he was immensely tired, his head dizzy and his stomach upset from the medications. He also didn't like the idea of going around parading his horribly bruised and bandaged up head, so he had resorted to wearing a black beanie that, aside from making him look incredibly lame, wasn't the best match for the hot and heavy air of the club. All of this, while he tried his best to work with jabs of pain, since he didn't take all the painkillers they had prescribed him. He wanted to stay awake and avoid getting used to them. He already knew his fair share of addictions. 

He also was still mad at K. No, mad was an understatement. He was furious at him, tired of his idiotic shenanigans and his unsustainable lifestyle and his not worrying about anything ever, even when it lived with him and cared for him and loved him. Ronan couldn't go on like that anymore, they had to talk about what had happened, sort the whole situation out and be serious about it for once. It was not gonna be easy and he had to stay focused, to not let himself forget or be distracted. 

None of this made Kavinsky look less handsome and attractive under the neon lights, moving slowly but still tentatively, with too much skin showing from the open sides of his shirt and hands too kin to brush over every right spot over Ronan's back not to be intoxicating. He knew what he was doing, they both knew, and he still liked it too much to be rational about it. So he downed the remaining painkillers with a beer, chased them with a dry and overpriced drink and decided to enjoy the night. He wasn't supposed to drink, but it had been a long time since he last cared about any kind of rule. Or his wellbeing. 

The whole set up made for a weird mix, with Ronan not being able to understand if his face was numb from the alcohol or the medications, if he was hungry because he hadn't eaten since he was dismissed from the hospital or if it were the chemicals burning inside his stomach, if he was going to have a great night or die from intoxication. It didn't matter, at least not at that moment, when everything felt light and easy and Kavinsky's mouth looked like the only important thing in the entire universe. 

He was mad, he knew he was mad, he also knew he needed to remind himself of what they had, how good his body felt intertwined with his own, why and how much he loved him even though the mere thought of being touched by him had made Ronan uncomfortable that morning. That was his life, what he had chosen, the man that came with it. He didn't have to reject all of it, he just had to make it right. 

It didn’t matter if it was dangerous and crooked and didn’t always feel good. It was okay. He was going to be okay. Those were the sweet words his mind made up on the go, while letting K push him into a bathroom stall. They were delusions. He didn’t care. His mouth was too hot over his, too beautiful and desirable and starving. Everything about Kavinsky was starving, his hips thrusting against his own, his hands restlessly chasing after his body, his lips and tongue and teeth. How he liked to be the only solution to that thirst, to be sought after,  _wanted_ .

Such an easy way out. Such a sweet one, too. Everything else could be handled in the morning, right now he just needed to feel less wrong. 

And he did, it didn't take much time or effort, just a complete lack of shame and the temporary and usual farewell to his sensitive roots, enough to let him ignore the constant banging and shouting outside the door and the disgrace that fucking in a club's bathroom was, for someone so devoted to love. It felt good, for a solid minute. It did as he adjusted his jeans and tried to brush off a slightly uncomfortable sensation, as he watched K do a line of coke to chase the feeling, as the both of them walked out of the door to pissed off strangers waiting in line. For a solid minute, Ronan thought that night could be, at least, a good farewell to that kind of life. Or that they didn't need to part from it at all, that it wasn't that bad as long as they managed some kind of rules and moderation. Then Kavinsky stroked his cheek, slowly, almost lovingly, making his heart skip several beats, an arm wrapped around his shoulders like he was worried to lose him in the crowd. He leaned close to his ear, a sly smile on his lips that really could mean anything. Even something nice. 

“Did they prescribe you oxy too? We can sell it for twice the price, if you have it on you. Wouldn't that be fun?" 

Ronan felt a switch being flipped from the inside, turning all the lights off and making the blood in his veins run cold. What was he even expecting?

Nothing else felt good about that night. It was like he had stepped out of the club, of the situation, of his own body. He was still with Kavinsky, drinking and dragging himself after him and exchanging a word or two with his brain-dead friends, but he didn't feel there anymore. He was numb and empty and tired and ready to go home, knowing damn well that shitty apartment they kept couldn't possibly be that. He felt alone, truly alone, in a way that went beyond the shitty friends he had and the good ones he had lost, something that lingered in the depths of his soul and maybe couldn't be cured. 

While he lit the fifth cigarette in an hour, leaning over the wall outside, he remembered his coffee with Adam that morning. His beautiful, inquisitive eyes, his furrowed brows, the way he had leaned over to listen, to understand. How scary had it been to be somewhat confronted, how jarring, to be seen, even in a bad light.

Adam was gonna leave tomorrow to go back to Harvard. Ronan texted him he was gonna meet him at the station to say goodbye.

\---

It’s not like he never understood things weren’t exactly good. Ronan knew they were and was more or less okay with it. He could deal with weird and dangerous, he already was both of those altogether.

But he had a hard time standing the whole drug thing. It was upsetting in itself spending day after day with someone that was constantly high, switching from a substance to another like he was performing a sort of weird, fucked-up ritual. He also didn't know how half of these worked, so until he got his way around Kavinsky's habits he really never knew what to expect, whether it was the version of him horny and almost excited or the one that fell asleep while talking to him without even noticing. But it was always uncomfortable, and always absolutely depressing. 

Ronan also hated the fact that he sold every kind of thing to anyone. It didn't matter if they were college kids, actual children, married men with families and lives that were slowly leaking through their hands. He still gave them whatever they wanted, sometimes with a discount or on loans, like he couldn't wait to ruin all of them. It took him a while to realize he enjoyed it exactly for that reason. Kavinsky was mafia rich, enough that he never would have needed to worry about work or taxes or things that were or weren't legal. It had been completely useless to try and stop him from dealing, he didn't care about any oh his reasons and lacked any kind of moral. Destruction was just a hobby for him. 

He was already unable to leave, at that point, so he just resorted to try and sleep or stay home when he went around selling.

What had gotten him close to calling the whole thing off, was Kavinsky's horrifying habits of unknowingly giving him stuff he didn't want. He didn't understand the reasons behind any of it, Ronan already followed him wherever he needed to go, often shitfaced enough to not complain. Maybe he just thought it was fun. Maybe he liked the idea of deciding for him, regulating his mood and his thoughts and what he could and couldn't do. Maybe Ronan was just the perfect subject for Kavinsky's love for breaking things, with pale skin easy to bruise and blue eyes that looked so god bloodstained. Maybe he just enjoyed the process of getting him barely conscious and marveling at how quick he was to fuck himself up by fighting and tripping and hurting himself. The idea of being another plaything was sick and revolting, but it fitted so right in K's rotten mold he couldn't rule it out. 

He just knew he hated it, he hated how it made him feel and how worried it got Matthew every time the fucker did it before Sunday lunch – it didn’t feel right to attend mass anymore. It always resulted in an explosive fight, one that went on for days and always left Kavinsky passively responding, completely unfazed. Like all of their fight, they were just a symphony of his insults alternating K's mocking with inappropriate sex in between. 

The first time, however, it was real. And he had actually thought about living. It was when he still thought it was a possible choice. It was also for something incredibly tame, he didn't know yet about how bad it could be. Ronan had woken up, one evening, choking on smoke, and realized Kavinsky was hotboxing the car. 

He opened up the window to let the smoke dissolve and noticed K was looking at him with bloodshot eyes, smiling like Ronan himself was some kind of practical joke. He had never smoked weed before, his whole experience with drugs was limited to the fentanyl pill that kind of led to his first kiss and he kind of had allowed, so of course he was gonna freak out about it. And god if he hated how he felt.

Ronan had heard about people experiencing weed differently and he was absolutely sure that he was not one of the lucky ones. His whole body felt heavy, his attention shifted on the wrong things, slowly, without making any sense. He was also panicking. 

Kavinsky had to notice, because he started laughing. It was vicious and mean and he just couldn't take it. He wasn’t used to any of this yet. He opened the door and let his body drop to the ground, to avoid his laughter and mean eyes and hoping he could hurt himself enough he'd snap out of it. 

He didn't, so he waited in the dust for hours, unable to move, so furious and afraid he wanted to claw at his own arms until the veins broke down. But his hands felt too heavy for that too. 

Eventually, he fell asleep. When he woke up, K was crouching over him, looking bored and slightly curious.

“Oh, you’re not dead. Good. You sure as hell do a lot of stupid shit, man.” he pointed out, lending him a hand. Something about the gesture was enough to set off all the rage he'd pent up. Ronan pushed him away onto the ground, then dragged himself into sitting up. 

“What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“Isn’t a little late for that?”

“Fuck you!”  


“Oh, that’s better.”

K laughed again and Ronan thought he was done. There was no way he was gonna be able to live like that. He was used to trusting his friends completely, to follow wherever they went without questioning, to give away his life to who deserved it and his heart into caring hands. Nothing about what was happening was even close to something like that. 

It was rotten and wrong and disgusting.

He could somewhat stand Kavinsky doing drugs but he wasn’t a plaything, he could not be toyed around just to enjoy the sounds he made.

Slowly, Ronan got up. He tried to get rid of the dust from his skin and clothes, but gave up quickly. 

“I’m done. We’re done. Whatever this is doesn’t work for me.” he said, his tone icy and detached, too furious to be anything but calm. The fire had already burned out, now he was made of hot coals.

K looked unimpressed by his attempt at leaving, looking down at him even when still carelessly sprawled on the ground. He didn’t look human.

“And why is that?" he asked, sliding his sunglasses back over his nose as he got comfortable over the dust like he was supposed to be there, a tourist in the process of developing a tan. 

Ronan didn’t want to talk to him. Kavinsky wasn't a sweet talker, but he was extremely good at being mean. He was a fool not to leave in silence, in hindsight, but he probably was too lonely not to give away second chances. 

“I can’t trust you to behave like a decent fucking human being.” Ronan whispered. He thought he was being vicious and venomous. 

The other just smiled.

“Doesn’t that sound familiar. I bet that’s exactly what your soft boyfriend would say to you right now. Maybe without the “fucking” part.”

Ronan felt his stomach clench so hard he was nauseous. He was right. He wasn’t in the position to judge or complain. He had wrecked Gansey’s car, ignored his calls and text and attempts to confront him. He was broken and wicked and not worth anything decent or kind.

“C’mon, leave. Go to you fucking idiotic friends, see if they’ll take you back.” he sounded almost upset, which was weird. He was also absolutely right.

Gansey would never trust him again. Blue would say he was an asshole and shun him in that fearless and beautiful way of hers. Noah would not talk to him. Adam's was gonna say he was the reckless idiot he'd always secretly thought he was. They were not going to welcome him back. He had nowhere else to go. Thinking about it hurt so much he had to catch his breath.

He didn’t even realize Kavinsky had gotten up until he was standing in front of him, gently touching his shoulder. He was so numb from the pain he just let him.

“Look, man, I’m sorry I pulled that shit on you earlier.” he whispered again, a tempting and vicious snake. He wasn’t sorry. He didn’t even try to look or sound the part.

“If you wanna go, fine.” 

Ronan wanted to. It was the only sane choice, staying meant destruction. 

But he didn’t have anywhere else to go, Kavinsky made sure to remind him. He did every time after that, without missing a beat, getting better and better at painting the picture of his eventual return, of his life alone and isolated as a messed-up idiot, damaged and unlovable. Unwanted. Unwanted. Unwanted. 

Then he stroked his cheek gently, caressing his lower lip with his thumb in a way that made Ronan feel weak all over. 

He needed someone to want him. To touch him. To make him feel like he was enough.

“But I really want you to stay.”

So Ronan did. Every time. Then he just stopped trying altogether.

\---

Adam's train left at 8 o'clock, so sleeping was out of the question for the night. They got home, Ronan took a freezing shower to shake the numbness and confusion off of him, then changed to clean clothes and left again. He rarely got out of the house so early, with Kavinsky dragging him around at ungodly hours and insomnia with a good deal of anxiety also kicking in whenever he actually managed to stay home. He found the cold morning air refreshing and almost exciting. 

As he recognized Adam's slender figure outside the station, Ronan forgot he was a ruin of a twenty-something and felt like a seventeen-year-old kid again, finding the presence of the boy he liked the only thing that made school hours even remotely bearable. He felt guilty about it, though. He'd lost his chance with Adam years ago, if he ever had one in the first place, and he was loyal to K, no matter how weird and twisted it was whatever they had between them. 

He still smiled a thin, playful smile as he stood in front of him. Adam raised an eyebrow, confused and slightly worried. 

“Are you alright? You look like hell.” he pointed out, furrowing his eyebrows in a way that made his heart melt for the sheer familiarity of it.

Ronan also didn’t remember the last time someone outside his family had asked him how he was, which made his words sound sweet and sink deep in his soul.

“I had a rough night.” he shrugged, scratching the back of his neck, embarrassed and weirdly happy.

“I can see that.”

He chuckled, then raised his shoulders. Adam looked at him as he was trying to read right through his skin, in the pattern of his organs and tissue and bone. It felt warm, which surprised him. He was so sure it was all gonna be about judgment and disdain, he couldn't get used to the thought of it not being incredibly painful and terrifying. Instead, he looked worried, understanding, maybe forgiving. It brushed over his skin like pure sunlight. He wanted to close his eyes and bathe in the possibility of having something like that in his life again. He also never wanted him to leave. 

“Had fun in the big city?” he asked, playfully, desperately wanting to keep the conversation going, to breathe and live inside his mind even a little bit more.

"Not really. But graduating isn't fun in general." he whispered. There was something heavy and tired about those words, in the way he'd averted his gaze as he spoke. The thought that Adam could have any aspect of his life be anything but perfectly in check surprised him.

He had fought so hard throughout his teenage years to make things right for himself. It must have been frustrating not being able to get there yet, tiring. He wanted to hear all about it, undeserving of it as he was. Adam looked at him and something in his eyes told him he wanted him to hear too. 

There was a time when Adam had felt so familiar, so close in the way they both used to clench their jaws and swallow pain, Ronan couldn’t bear to look at him without suffocating in his own longing. Their relationship had been weird and confusing, made of sneers and mean gossip and idiotic jokes and ideas but also long gazes and soothing silences. There was a kind of familiarity, of comfortable sitting in the dark, that he couldn’t really share with anyone else. He missed it so much thinking about it hurt.

It was a bit too much for the moment.

“I wouldn't know." he joked, calmly and sweetly. He didn't want to undermine his troubles, but he wasn't going to force him to talk about it. 

Adam's lips curled slightly, a thankful and sincere smile. It was insane how much they still got each other, how ready they were to go back to the unusual pair they used to be. 

“Maybe I’ll tell you about it.”

Ronan's jaw dropped. He wasn't expecting that. He was absolutely sure his visit and the coffee and this conversation were part of an event that could only happen once in a lifetime, something that would become the perfect bridge between sweet memory and lucid dream. Adam looked pleased with his reaction. 

“You will?”

“Next time around, if you go back with me.”

That was just insane. Not real. He was close to pinching himself to make sure it wasn’t part of a sweet and evil dream. Why would Adam want Ronan with him? He had no reason to trust him, let alone actually enjoying his company at his smart people college.

“And what would I do at Harvard?” he asked, perfectly aware of how dumb he sounded.

“I was talking Henrietta. I’m getting my car fixed so I can drive there for the holidays. Blue's family insists on it every year." his words were calm and perfectly laid out, he knew what he was saying. Adam didn't say those kinds of things without meaning them "I can stop here on the way and pick you up. We’ll split gas money and I won’t have to make the drive alone again.”

He didn’t know what to say. It was so much to unpack: Blue and Adam still being friends or maybe more, Adam showered by love and sweet gestures by the charmingly odd ladies of 300 Fox Way, Adam asking Ronan to come back to Virginia with him. To come home. To come home. To come home.

He wanted it so bad he couldn’t breathe, let alone talk.

But going back meant a different thing to him than it did to Adam. It meant a house full of ghosts he couldn't visit, places made of a light that now burned through his skin, friends he had let down. It meant hell and fighting and pain. It was impossibly hard. 

Adam read right through him again.

“Please, consider it at least. You don’t have to see anyone you don't want to. You just need a break from all of this." he whispered, so worried he didn't even think about letting his southern drawl slip, beautiful and familiar. 

Ronan thought about it long after the train left, picking apart the moment again and again in his head, the warm tone of his voice, the hint of need in his proposal, of hope in those tired eyes. He couldn’t let go. He wanted that, any part of that, no matter how hard it would be or how big of a shitfest K would make of it.

He wanted to go, to do something for himself, to pry into Adam’s life and let him into his again.

Almost mechanically, he took out his phone and typed the other number he spitefully knew by memory. The voiced sounded genuinely shocked.

“This is a fucking surprise.”

“Declan. I want to go to the Barns.” he said, firm and sure as he hadn’t been in a long time.

His brother stayed silent for a long bit, fumbling around with papers and drawers. He was taking him seriously, which Ronan deeply appreciated. 

“Alright.”

“And I want to see mom.” his voice was a bit creaky on that part, but he pretended not to notice.

Declan this time stayed completely still. He couldn’t even hear him breathing anymore.

“Are you sure about that?”

“Kinda.” which meant that, yes, he was, but he was also not ready at all.

Again, his brother didn't argue. Maybe he was tired of fighting him about it. Maybe he thought it was still better than having him around New York getting drunk and crushing his skull against a window. Maybe he was just worried and thought he needed it and was absolutely right. 

He just sighed.

"Fine. But don't you fucking dare bring that loser anywhere near her or the house. I will find out and bash your head in for good this time." 

Ronan chuckled. He liked his insufferable asshole brother more than his tired, worried one, so this made him feel better.

“I won’t.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a long one and a weird one but somehow I did it. I'm looking forward to what comes after this and I can't wait to write it.  
I hope you liked this more than I liked writing it, because boy was it hard and weird.


	6. pretend you're fine in the dark all you want, it won't hide how bad you're still searching for light.

Talking to Kavinsky about the trip wasn’t as hard as he thought. In fact, it wasn’t hard at all, Ronan was still pissed off at him, so he managed not to crack under the pressure of mean comments sprinkled over everything they did or talked about. He didn’t care whether K was mad or not, the fucker sure as hell didn’t worry after almost wrecking his entire head, so he could stand his constant and subdued bitching about Adam and the situation for the entire month that led to the trip. Maybe it would have been different before the crash, when he had lesser reasons to be furious at him, when he didn’t feel their relationship taking a weird and uncomfortable turn. Now he just couldn’t take it. He needed a break, from him and everything else that came with it.

Casually texting Adam throughout the process also helped. It was nothing serious, just a couple of details to set the date and the occasional joke or comment. But it did make him feel better, lighter, a normal guy with normal friends that attend college and worked on theses and didn’t sell drugs. It was nice.

Kavinsky looked almost upset, the evening that he left. He had looked up at him from the kitchen table, an eyebrow raised, something about him extremely off. It was how lucid and awake his eyes were, completely focused on him, so much he could almost feel them burn through his flesh. He felt guilty for a moment, then he remembered everything that had happened on the interstate and the day after. While he enjoyed his winter holidays in Virginia, K would be in the process of having the last on a long list of accusation to be dropped by an expensive and corrupted lawyer. Ronan didn't even know why they still bothered trying to charge him. 

“Call me if something’s wrong. And fucking eat something once in a while.” he whispered, brushing his fingers between his hair lightly. Kavinsky laughed at him, vicious and low.

“You can suck up to me as much as you want, I will still slit your fucking throat if you fuck the poor loser.”

It was weird seeing him jealous. All of what was happening was weird, to be honest. K never looked distressed, never fought or begged or expressed any kind of feeling. Maybe it was because Ronan was always to busy doing whatever he wanted to give him time to actually feel something. Everything was a quick fix, a quick jab, a quick fuck to numb things down. He couldn’t get out of it now, he was forced to sit down and think, even when high. Maybe both of them needed this.

He cupped his face in one hand, bringing him closer.

“And why would I tell you that?” he asked, sweet and careless. It was good. He felt good.

Kavinsky couldn’t stand that, which was not a surprise and also not a nice feeling.

“Because you fucking belong to me.”

Ronan didn’t like that either.

He kissed the small tattoo over his cheekbone, then took his bag and left.

It would be fine, it was something he needed, a way to get himself straight and then fix his relationship. This didn't change how genuinely happy he felt when he saw Adam doing his best to signal him towards his car. He knew he wasn't supposed to feel his heart go faster, his face warm, his whole soul sing and lit up, all of that just for him. But there was something about Adam's shitty and mismatched car, about his messy hair peeking through the window and his beautiful slender hand slowly waving at him to get closer that was just so charming that it hurt. He wasn't used to that kind of light anymore, it burned his eyes in the best kind of way. 

He leaned towards the window and Adam was there, real, to take him with him. His eyes were tired but also somewhat excited. Ronan felt a different kind of warmth reaching him when he realized he wasn't the only one looking forward to that trip. 

“Parrish. Long time no see.” he grinned, happier than he was supposed to be, if he’d actually forgot to be scared. But he felt high, in a good and new way. 

He didn't like change or feelings, but that was something different and special. It was a chance to get back even the smallest fraction of a life he hadn't appreciated enough and now missed with every fiber of his being. 

Maybe he wouldn't get it, he certainly didn't deserve it, but he was gonna try regardless. It was either that or destruction, it was worth a try. 

He noticed him furrowing his brows again, in a confused expression that then turned to genuine surprise. 

“Lynch. You’re growing out your hair.” he pointed out.

Right, that was also a thing that was happening.

Taking the stitches out of his head had not been fun, same went for the process of letting the part heal, which was long and left that section of his head too raw and delicate for shaving over it without hurting himself or at least triggering some anxiety. So he had to let his hair grow, at least until everything was nice and completely healed. In the meantime, Ronan was as itchy and uncomfortable as he was grateful for the fact that, at least, it covered the fucking ugly mess of a scarring wound that now crawled over his head. 

His hair grew fast and thick, so it already kind of hid his head completely, but thank god it wasn't enough to curl yet. Hopefully, he was gonna shave it again before he could lose any kind of respect. 

He instinctively ran a hand over his head, a nervous gesture that felt different now. 

"Had too. I was looking very ugly, brain poking out and everything." he joked, trying to conceal too many emotions altogether. He wasn't used to looking like that, less mean and scary, his edges slightly but still visibly softened. Last time his hair had gotten that long, his father was alive. He was too old and honest to pretend he didn't felt self-conscious about it. 

But Adam just nodded.

"I like it." he said, in his practical and concise way that made it feel like an objective data more than a kind compliment. Ronan liked that a lot. 

He threw his bag onto the backseats and got in the car, unused to the tight space of it but not in an uncomfortable way. He noticed Adam, still not starting the car, pointing his index finger towards a corner on his top right: seatbelt. Ronan didn't remember the last time he had actually buckled one on. Probably, had it been recent, he wouldn't have crushed his head inside a window. But he'd already learned that lesson. 

He felt a sweet, warm kind of excitement as they left, watching the familiar building that still currently held Kavinsky getting further from him. It was still kind of upsetting, but he was gonna be fine.

Ronan leaned back on his seat and turned slightly towards Adam, studying the elegant way he held both hands in the same position on the steering wheel, the small slouch he needed to keep to properly fit in the car, his eyes focused on the road, beautiful and awake.

So much they immediately noticed he was staring at him. He decided to roll with it and made up a random question. 

“Can I smoke in here?” he asked, the sentence clear enough to be the perfect backup after all the time he’d found himself saying it.

He had picked it up again as soon as he’d got the stitches out of his head, but he didn’t really feel the need to do it now. He liked that kind of nervous.

“I'd prefer not, since I've just got this cleaned up. There should be some candy in the glove compartment, though, if you need to distract yourself.” he replied, pointing at it with a quick gesture of his hand.

Ronan followed it to reveal a huge bag of off-brand gummy bears, still perfectly sealed. Adam had pulled it off so flawlessly he almost didn't realize they were probably just for him, that he probably had remembered about him smoking and thought about the eventuality of him fidgeting and getting uneasy. It was such a sweet gesture it was hard to pretend he hadn't picked up on it. So he just dumped an entire handful of candy into his mouth.

Adam laughed, raising a playful but still slightly worried eyebrow.

“When was the last time that you ate?" he asked, with a hidden, serious undertone that made something inside his stomach tighten. He didn't remember that version of Adam. 

The one that filled his memories and dreams was a bitter boy, pragmatic, focused on going forward and crawling his way to the top. He worried about his friends in a different, strong and direct way. He didn’t know what happened to him, what could have turned him into this charming, responsible stranger.

Ronan felt a kind of bitter jealousy, with the sweet aftertaste left by the realization that, still, this version of Adam was directing his resilient care toward him. It was a weird and mixed feeling, the kind that made him feel human, grey and imperfect and conflicted. 

So, of course, he had to joke his way out of it.

“Can't recall. We mostly feast on vodka and cocaine." he pointed out, in such a serious and calm manner that made everything even more ridiculous. 

“You do look like someone that exclusively snacks on cigarette butts, to be honest.” Adam deadpan, without diverting his eyes from the road, tilting slightly his head to the side and beating even his own impossible straight face.

Ronan couldn't refrain himself from bursting into laughter. It wasn't even that funny or witty, frankly, the delivery was so simple it didn't even feel like a joke. But his heart hadn't felt so light in a long time. He had been so heavy for so long, so unworthy. It felt good to be young again. 

When he looked up at him, Adam had a weird look to his eyes, something brooding and tired. It felt so familiar. Ronan didn't pretend he hadn't noticed. 

“There should be still some coffee left, in the container under your seat.”

“That would be very much appreciated.”

“And also a chocolate bar somewhere.”

“Maybe later.”

\---

Ronan had spent his entire life on the passenger seat of a car. Before Kavinsky’s eery Mitsubishi or Gansey’s charming Camaro, he rode shotgun in his father BMW.

The rule was supposed to be that, when their mother wasn't there, the privileged front seat was supposed to go to the eldest son. Declan used to point it out every time, when they were little, but rules never applied to Niall Lynch or his middle son. Ronan never had to beg or cry, to get what he wanted, all he needed to do was climb over the seat close to his father before anyone even had the time to ask or propose. The man liked bold, he liked initiative, mischievously satisfied grins, he smiled as Ronan buckled his seatbelt and Declan complained. 

"That's not fair!"

He also liked to please people, to turn towards his eldest son and gently run his fingers through his dark curls, he liked watching his angered expression trying hard not to turn soft.

"You can sit there next time, Declan." 

Honestly, it would have been way easier to just scoop Ronan up and gave his other son what he wanted. He _was_ right, Ronan would have complained for the sake of complaining for a minute, before letting go to play with Matthew, maybe using the excuse to get ice cream later.

Instead, his father always insisted on the hard way, the one that required sweet words and sweeter hands caressing his brother and Declan getting angrier and angrier after each time.

“You _always_ say that!”

Again, he was right. Ronan could play that conversation alone in his head, tedious and unchanging. Declan would just not give up. Niall would also not compromise.

Instead, he leaned between the front seats to get closer to his eldest son, cupped his face in one hand and kissed his forehead.

“I mean it this time.”

He never did. His father lied as easy as he breathed.

They came home late, that night, Ronan didn’t remember what they had done but he remembered peeking behind his seat and seeing Matthew strapped in his baby seat and Declan tumbled over the side, his face pressed against his brother’s arm, both of them peacefully asleep. There was something deeply unfair in the perfect picture they formed without him, the way they were leaving him behind to venture together into another dimension. He wanted to wake them up, to join them, something in between. He just felt left out, which didn’t really make any sense whatsoever, but Ronan was the perfect example of a stubborn, attention-seeking middle child.

“Are you tired?” his father’s voice was deep and velvety, made for scamming and sweet-talking. But Ronan still reacted to it like a faithful little soldier, immediately sitting straight on his seat and turning towards him.

He was smoking a cigarette, one arm casually laid outside the window, his eyes lost somewhere between the starry sky and the visible light behind the glass doors over the porch. His mother didn’t like him smoking inside. She probably wouldn’t have liked him smoking in the car with them either, but she didn’t have to know. He had lots of unspoken rules with his father, about those and other kinds of things.

Ronan  _was_ tired, to be honest. The day had been long and filled with fighting and laughter, as they had to be every time his father came home, to make the best out of every moment. But he didn't want to sleep, now, he still wanted to steal every minute with him that he could, especially when they were alone.

“No.” he whispered, eyeing quickly his brothers, before resting his gaze on his father’s towering and majestic figure again.

Niall nodded and looked at him, pleased. Ronan closed his eyes as a large hand brushed over his head, strong but still extremely delicate when it had to. He smelled the scent of tobacco from his fingers and smiled, forcing himself to soak in every detail, to remember all of them during the next trip away from home.

“Did you have fun?”

It was kind of a dumb question. They always had fun when Niall was there and  _Ronan_ had more fun than anyone else. He nodded, happily. Then he remembered it was not gonna last and let out a low sigh.

“Is there something wrong?” 

His father had dropped the cigarette and was leaning over him, now. His voice was sweet in the mischievous way it always was, with no particular inclination that would suggest he was talking to a five-year-old. Niall Lynch rarely spoke to his sons like they were children, but he never did it with Ronan. He was born his equal.

He felt his chest heavy and his throat tightening, but he didn’t cry. He tried not to sound sad either.

“Can’t you stay a little longer this time?” he asked, quietly, trying also not to look like he was pleading. Though he was. “Mom likes it when you’re here.”

Niall smiled, a thin and sweet smile exclusive to Ronan, reserved for his bad attempts at outsmarting and convincing his father. He liked it when they looked even more like each other. 

He kissed his forehead and cupped his face in his hand, staring deeply into his eyes and letting Ronan drown into his own. That whole moment, somehow, felt like a secret.

“You have to understand that we are special people, you and I. We can’t stay too long in the same place without burning it to the ground.”

Ronan didn’t understand. His father was, also, kind of a weird guy.

\---

“So, how’s fancy people school treating you?”

They had been driving for a while, now, Adam was looking a bit tired and Ronan couldn't blame him: after all, he had already made a good chunk of the driving by himself. He could've volunteered to switch with him, at least for an hour, just to let him rest for a bit, but he knew it wasn't exactly easy to trust his driving. He had also crashed the last car he had borrowed or, at least, the last car Adam knew of.

He didn't respond, his eyes still pointing to the road, not blinking. Ronan slightly touched his arm, making him flinch and come back to himself. 

“_Shit_\- Ronan, sorry, I got distracted.” he whispered, clearly alarmed, placing a hand over his chest, his gaze alternating between Ronan and the road.

_Ronan._ It crawled under his skin, secret and special, forever staining his memory. It wasn't supposed to be important but it was, to him. 

He shrugged, fighting hard with himself not to show how much of a ridiculous mess those five letters had just made him.

“No problem, man.”

Adam checked his watch. It was the same, cheap, barely functioning thing he wore when he was seventeen, slightly more damaged, the kind of old that had yet to become vintage. Still, it looked beautiful and elegant on his slender wrist. Once again, the familiarity of it made him almost shiver.

It was 09:37 p.m. They didn’t have dinner yet and were close to reaching Baltimore, which meant they had at least another three hours to go. 

“I think I should have left sooner.” Adam admitted, clearly mad at himself for not being able to plan better. 

It was kind of weird, to be honest. It was hard for him to picture perfectly calculated Adam Parrish, who worked three jobs and lived alone while still managing to get perfect scores in every class, starting an eight hours trip – twelve, for him – without planning on timing and traffic and everything. It didn't bother Ronan, for sure, he didn't mind taking his sweet time before facing his personal ghost town, but it did felt unusual. He felt like he was witnessing something distant and unreachable, the ruin of an ancient temple in a far Mediterranean city. Something that required years of studying and research to be understood, to be placed somewhere in time. But you do get guides, and history lessons and defoliants, to understand ancient ruins, so he hat to be able to understand his old friend too. Investigating Adam Parrish just required patience and trust. Maybe, Ronan could manage that. 

"Where's the next exit?" he asked, calmly deflecting Adam from whatever form of self-punishment he was clearly inflicting on himself inside his mind. 

The other slightly leaned over the GPS, squinting to read.

“Edgewood. Looks pretty close." he answered, before turning his eyes on the road immediately after “We can look for a motel and continue tomorrow. I’m too tired to trust myself t make it.”

Ronan hadn't heard a sentence that responsible in years, probably. There was something sweet and warm, about it, something he had missed dearly. He also hadn't felt that safe in years. He let a hint of a smile cross his lips, then slowly took out his phone. 

Technology as a whole was his worst enemy, but it also turned out to be extremely useful when he needed a place to stay in a random town he’d just found out existed. It didn’t take long to find everything they needed.

“There’s this shithole renting rooms for fifty a night. We can split, I don't trust motels.” he pointed out, not really worried about the price, but knowing it had the power to worry Adam instead. He just had to put him in a position that didn’t make him feel like he was asking. Or taking whatever crumbs he was leaving out.

Adam seemed to think about it, then nodded. It looked less guilty than Ronan would have thought, doing it, but maybe he  _had_ grown up for real. Not everyone was in his desperate manchild state.

“For that cheap, it must be a shithole indeed.” he pointed out, looking moderately amused by the fact. Ronan liked the face he was making, he looked young and alive.

“Average raiting’s two stars. The height of luxury.” he confirmed, laying back on his seat again, turning towards Adam. He met his gaze once. Both of them smiled.

“Shithole it is, then.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this took so fucking long to edit I'm ashamed, since I've basically written the whole thing in around a day. but whatever. I have to thank again and again my bestfriend, for dealing with me in various kinds of ways and reading the ugliest, worst drafts, and ej (octoberfeeling) for reading through the slightly better ones while I struggle constantly to basically exist.  
thanks for everyone who left kudos or comments (personally, on the discord), feedback is always appreciated!
> 
> p.s. Niall Lynch is an asshole and a bitch and I hate him.


	7. you're so easy to love and you don't even know it.

Ronan turned around in his seat, looking at the perfect curve of Adam's nose, his beautiful fingers over the steering wheel, his characteristically furrowed brows as he tried to make out road signs in the dark, fighting hunger and sleep and something he really couldn't grasp, but was still _there_. It filled the air every time a moment of silence passed, heavy and uncomfortable, and he just couldn’t stand it.

Maybe it was Kavinsky, or the fact that he was still in Ronan’s life, or Ronan’s life at all. Maybe was Gansey and their bad blood and the fact that he was probably still mad at him. Maybe it wasn’t about Ronan at all, maybe it was about Adam, something that nested inside him and now struggled to come out. 

There had been a time, once, when Adam felt comfortable sitting beside him. When Ronan visited his apartment late at night, without notice, and just sat on the ground, watching him study or clean or just listening him talk about the little things, the less scary, less bothering ones, because it felt right. There had been a time when Adam felt comfortable around him, when they could stare into each other eyes and understand, without the need for words that hurt and truths that both wanted to dismiss. It wasn't easy, no shit, maybe it wasn't even really liberating, but it was so wonderfully comforting to have company in the dark. It was a relief, to sit together with their backs to the wall and their eyes closed, Ronan with his beer and Adam with whatever caffeinated off-brand energy drink he'd picked, just to talk about their day and laugh and feel young, with their legs almost brushing, their soul almost bare. 

They didn't have to pretend they were happy, or light, or even remotely fine, they just shared the tiny space without having to pretend, to put up masks and cold looks and mechanical responses. To look more alive, functioning. It felt good. It felt like home. 

Ronan missed it, now. He missed looking at that tired and endearing boy and being able to observe under the seams, to have the privilege to see him in his purest, most unfiltered self, raw and irritated and human. 

Adam was hiding some part of him, now, though he didn't know which one. He just knew it hurt that he was doing it with him. He liked being his exception. He liked being more than a stranger or an acquaintance or someone he had to worry about. 

Something about the restless fidgeting of Adam’s fingers told him he probably missed it too.

He let out a deep breath, then decided to cut out that bothering silence, reached out for the radio and fumbled with it to have it turn on. Bad, slightly distorted music now filled the car, leaving no space for old, dark thoughts. He turned it down until it was just a low and distant murmur. 

Adam looked at him, still questioning, still fighting with himself, with the ghost of the Ronan that died when the Pig crashed, with the weird, new Ronan in front of him, the fact that they kind of resembled each other. Maybe not enough. Maybe too much.

“I still have to talk about fancy people school, huh.”

Maybe just enough.

Ronan looked up at him again and felt calm. New Ronan didn't know how to react to Adam as the old one had. He was too busy weighing every word and look and face twitch, too worried by the process of reading him, to see if he still could, too scared and emotional and angry at his own excessively beating heart. 

At this moment, though, he wasn't agitated. It was different, now. Adam needed it. He knew it from the faint crack in his voice on the word  _talk_ , from the nervous hint of a laugh he let go on the end, from the quick glimpse of his tired eyes he got before he turned them back on the road. He knew because Adam was letting him know.

He crossed his arms, looking in at the unraveling black road in front of them. Something about all of that was so incredibly, beautifully, peaceful. 

"I mean, if you want to." he pointed out, letting his eyes go over him for just a moment, in perfect timing to meet Adam's. They were still such a perfect, uncommon, match. It almost made him angry. 

“I do.” Adam whispered, nervous and tired.

He didn't want, though. His shoulders were tense, his lips pressed in a thin line, one had fidgeting and clenching and moving time and time again. He was uneasy, probably there wasn't a part of the whole process that he liked. But he desperately needed it. 

Ronan didn’t say anything, he just gave him space, time, looking at the Maryland roads on the GPS and faintly complaining about how bad he needed to smoke. 

He watched Adam’s shoulder relax, in the corner of his eye, his breathing easier.

“It’s going good. I’m graduating early.” he began, low and careful, laying every sentence diligently one after the other, lo build a comfortable barrier before whatever he actually intended to say.

It was probably the truth, but Ronan knew it didn’t mean anything. Adam had been a top student for as long as he knew it, but that never helped him being more stable, at ease, not crumbling. Quite the opposite, indeed.

So he didn’t say anything. Not even a joke.

“It wasn't that hard, either. I just had to make sure to sign for classes is time. And take the summer ones. And night ones." his voice got lower, at one point, more fatigued, almost shaky. Ronan didn't need the hint of exasperated sarcasm in his voice, to understand it wasn't good. He could picture it perfectly, Adam bent over his college desk as he had over the cheap one in his apartment once, burning away his eyesight over college textbooks as he did on book essays and summer readings. 

It hurt. There was no other way of describing it, it just hurt.

"I also had to skip sleeping, a couple of times. More than a couple. Not fun, to be honest. Especially when it led to embarrassing accounts of me collapsing in the library." 

Adam laughed, this time, in a low and bitter way. Ronan didn't. He wanted to hold his hand, but just looked at his sad, tired face instead. 

There was no joy in the fact that he was hearing it, no satisfaction in Adam so restless, so desperate that he was forced to trust him again. It felt wrong, but he listened.

“But I did pass all of my classes, on the first try, with good grades too." 

Something else was coming. He knew it, it was inevitable. 

“But I also had a nervous breakdown, halfway through last semester.” 

He had tried to make it sound like a normal thing. He didn't succeed. Every word was heavy, fatigued, like it struggled to go over his lungs and the air inside them and every organ and bone and piece of flesh. 

Ronan imagined beautiful, smart, caring Adam Parrish losing his mind in a college dorm. He pictured him perfectly, surviving on coffee and protein bars, getting thinner and paler and more tired, more nervous, more desperate. He didn't need a reason or a description. The idea of the resilient, broken boy that came to class with bruises hidden under collared shirts, picking himself up and studying again after breaking down completely was enough. 

And he knew it wasn't his fault. He knew Adam was probably hiding his insane lifestyle from Gansey, Blue, Noah and whatever bland and loving new friend he'd found at Harvard, but he still did. Because they were different. They had been, at least. 

Ronan didn't think, nor he questioned himself, nor weighed his options. He just unbuckled his seatbelt and carefully let his head press on Adam's shoulder, without looking at him, without asking. He knew words weren't enough. He knew there wasn't a chance for something even remotely appropriate to say at that moment. 

He just wanted to touch him. To remind him that he was close, that he understood, even after years and differences and unforgivable sins. 

Adam understood. He breathed out slowly. 

They made the rest of the drive to the motel in silence. It wasn’t a bad one. There was something warm and peaceful about it, a different charge that had to do with trust and secret laid down before the dark road and Adam trusting, the secrets in their pockets receding. Something had changed in the small space of the car, something was lighter, something heavier, some old seems were getting sewn together in secret. 

It still was difficult to break, though, the soft murmur of the radio and the occasional commands on the GPS undisturbed as Adam kept driving and Ronan kept resting over his shoulder, his eyes closed, his heart heavy but warm.

Then soft, embarrassingly familiar notes came in his rescue. A sly smile crossed his lips without him even noticing, as he slowly turned the volume up. 

_I still hear your voice when you sleep next to me_

When he looked up at Adam, he was still driving, too heavy and distracted to notice, rightfully so. But he still trusted the sweet irony of old songs. 

_I still feel your touch in my dreams_

He looked up again, still nothing. Adam looked at the radio once, then back on the road. Ronan closed his eyes and sighed heavily.

“_Forgive me my weakness, but I don't know why”_

It was barely a murmur, but he was leaning on his right side. Adam had to hear. And he did, slightly raising an eyebrow in response, curious but still not sold on the moment.

Good. Ronan hadn't known he was ready to lose any kind of dignity when the song began, he just hoped the absurdity of it would be enough to lighten the moment without the need for a cheeky, feel-better sentence. He wasn't going to be able to fix Adam's problems in the span of a car ride, he sure as hell wasn’t going to try, but he could make the process of talking and letting go and being real an easier one.

So he sang lauder, looking at him, slightly tilting his head to the side.

“_Without you it's hard to survive...”_

He was far from being in tune, and even further from decent, but that was not the point. The point was Adam looking down at him, a hint of a confused smile on his lips.

“Lynch?” he asked, slowly letting the mood of the moment reach him.

It was extremely embarrassing. It was also too late to turn back, now. Ronan  _was _ a quitter, but he was also a loser. And Adam was his friend, and he knew, and he was so tired and desperate that he’d felt the need to talk to him.

And he really wanted to make him laugh.

So he sat up straight, swinging from side to side, moving his head to the rhythm.

“_'Cause every time we touch, I get this feeling_

_And every time we kiss I swear I could fly_

_Can't you feel my heart beat fast, I want this to last_

_Need you by my side”_

Adam didn't join. He also teased him all the way to the drive-in where they picked up dinner, then to the motel. But he was laughing, his tired, beautiful eyes made brighter, so it was worth it. 

\---

Ronan had felt  _something_ for Adam since the first time he had laid his eyes on him. But that didn’t mean that he liked him right away. Quite the contrary, to be honest.

He was a stubborn teenager, purposefully angry and rebellious, so he didn't immediately greet feelings he couldn't even comprehend as positive warm things. He didn't admit having a crush to himself, he didn't even know what that felt like, or maybe he did but without understanding it. He was too busy denying the whole process of feeling, of loving, of being vulnerable and human and everything that wasn't dangerous to approach. And that's without even mentioning the whole  _sexuality_ thing.

So, every time Adam fixed Gansey's car, every time they went out for a ride or pizza or the search for Glendower, every time he saw his hands raised in class in front of him, every time their eyes met during a slightly more interesting conversation and his heart skipped a beat, Ronan thought to himself  _I hate this fucking guy_ . It didn’t matter how much time he spent looking at him, memorizing every detail of his hands and mouth and eyes, how carefully he listened to his interventions in class and his snarky comments, he carefully hid everything behind a curated wall of disdain. 

He wasn’t interested in Adam because he liked him. It was Gansey who liked him, Ronan had to  _tolerate_ him while facing the fear he would replace him in his best friend's heart. It was easy tricking himself into thinking he couldn't stand every detail about him when all of those things made him a more suitable company to Gansey. So fuck him being smart and elegantly beautiful and always ready with the right answer for the right person, no matter if it was a teacher or a student or an old lady looking for a shop. Fuck him being better than Ronan in every possible way. He was the competition. He refused to like him, let alone being infatuated by him.

But he was obsessed with him. Gansey had pointed that out once, after one of the many over the top parodies of Adam's accent he had meanly paraded in the comfort of Monmouth. Ronan, in return, had not very kindly explained exactly where he could put his obsession for  _your stuck-up nerd friend_ . But he was right.

He spent his hours thinking about Adam, making jokes over every single one of his hand gestures and vowel pronunciations and recurring ticks, watching him in class, talking and reading and taking notes and looking like a living and breathing masterpiece. He also loved bothering him. Especially when talked to other people or listened to the teacher or was doing everything at all that didn't involve him giving Ronan attention. 

It was the most childish and evident display of a crush anyone could imagine. But Ronan was shockingly good at hiding things from himself. 

That was until Adam did something he could just not distort. That he could not insult or complain about or hate. And that had also been Ronan’s fault.

It wasn’t the first time they attended chemistry together. It wasn’t even the first time he had spent the entire hour whispering idiotic comments in his ear and sliding up even worse folded up notes over his desk when he sat up straight to concentrate on class.

But it was the first time that Adam had actually responded. Sure, it was just a small, perfectly folded up note with just  _shut the fuck up_ written over it, in response to some stupid comment about saponification and Fight Club, but it was  _something_ . More than whatever Ronan usually climbed on to bother him. 

So, a back and forth dance of sliding notes began, with Adam trying to break it off every time only to give up and respond and Ronan always ready with a dumber, more annoying answer.

_Adam, I can’t shut the fuck up. This is a written conversation. I thought you were smart._

_Please leave me alone. I’m trying to get an education._

_I’m TrYiNg To GeT aN eDuCaTiOn!_

_Are you really trying to mock me on paper?? Jesus, you are a child. _

_That's blasphemy. You should be ashamed. I will report directly to the Lord._

_Ronan, you say it all the time. _

_I can. He and I have a private agreement about it. _

_Don’t you have a car to crash or something?_

Ronan chuckled, already writing down the appropriate infuriating response when he knocked his book off the desk with an excited movement of the elbow. Somehow, the teacher hadn't noticed the entire exchange. But he did notice that. 

“Lynch. Since you clearly don’t need the text or any teaching, would you be kind enough to tell the class the resulting product of this reaction?" 

The teacher's voice had surpassed irritation, reaching a kind of nihilistic calm that could only be the result of too many hours of witnessing Ronan Lynch. 

He wasn't even remotely bothered by it, he just laid back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest. He looked at the intricate angles and lines drawn on the board, without even trying to guess what they could lead to. Then back to the teacher.

“_It’s glycerol._” Adam whispered, in front of him. Of course, he just had to show anyone else. The fucker.

The teacher was both pleased and slightly annoyed.

“We know you know, Mr. Parrish. But maybe Mr. Lynch can fill us in on the formula.”

He couldn’t. Of course he couldn’t, chemistry was dumb and he didn’t care for it. He was also, at the moment, too busy bothering Adam to listen to anything the teacher was saying. That was why he was asking. He didn’t want to catch him being distracted, he just wanted to humiliate him. Teachers saw everything other than fear and admiration as a challenge to their authority. But Ronan didn’t care.

He saw Adam's slender hand raise slowly in front of him, ready to answer in his place. He was ready to let out an annoyed sigh when he noticed dark scribbles over the back of his hand. 

_ C _ _ 3 _ _ H _ _ 8 _ _ O _ _ 3 _

It was the formula. Ronan’s heart skipped a beat. Sure, he didn’t care. But Adam did. Or maybe he just felt bad for distracting him. Whatever was the reason, he was helping him.

He was, also, smart enough to guess the answer after being as distracted as he was.

Ronan couldn’t ignore the palpitations.

“C 3 H 8 O 3 ” he repeated out loud, without moving, with the meanest, most pleased smile he could show.

The teacher just raised an eyebrow and resumed the lesson.

Adam turned his head towards him and met his eyes just for one moment,  _ smirking. _

Ronan couldn't ignore anything anymore after that. 

\---

The motel was a real shithole. Everything that was made of metal was rusty, everything with paint on it was chipped and faded, the carpets in the hall looked genuinely horrifying and the man at the reception could be used to portray the encyclopedic definition of the word "creep". The room was also a nightmare, with flimsy mattresses that creaked at the slightest pressure, dead insects in the corners and a bathroom that probably had seen both murders and births, judging by the smell. Ronan was used to smoking inside the house, both he and Kavinsky did it, but everything in the goddamn place smelt like it was made of ashtrays. In short, everything about it sucked, which absolutely amused Ronan. 

“I can’t believe they managed to make fifty-one fucking dollar a night for room feel expensive. But this shithole should be cheaper.” he pointed out, inspecting an armchair that was probably older than him. Maybe of the both of them combined.

"Fifty dollars cheaper, if you ask me." Adam agreed, raising an eyebrow at the extremely sheer looking blinds. 

The process of convincing Adam to share a room had been extremely easy, thanks to the condition of the place. He couldn't really complain if Ronan didn't like the idea of sleeping alone in a place like that or feared  _ “positively high chances we’re both gonna get murdered” _ . Granted, if that hadn’t been enough, he would have pulled the  _ “person with a head injury in need” _ card, but luckily that hadn't been the case and Ronan could rest easy knowing he'd spared Adam at least twenty bucks. Old habits immediately coming back. 

Though, there wasn’t really a way of sleeping easily, in a place like that. Especially after whole hours without smoking.

Ronan patted his pockets to ensure everything was still in place, ditched his heavy jacket for a black hoodie and reached the door.

"I'm going for a smoke. This place smells like shit enough without me contributing." he declared, fumbling with the rusty doorknob to get it open again. It was hilarious how disgusting it all was. 

“Wait.”

Ronan turned to look at Adam, only to find himself face to face with him. For a moment, the sheer impact of his gaze blocked his entire thought process. He felt too close, but didn't pull back. 

“I’m coming with you. This place gives me the creeps.” he explained, furrowing his eyebrows in the familiar, adorable way that still somewhat hurt.

Ronan nodded and stepped out, fleeing the lack of space between them. He walked to the staircase leading to the bottom floor to sit on the tallest step. 

Bad idea. Adam set beside him, their legs touching, triggering the strong, painful desire to lean his head over his shoulder again, without heavy feelings to make the process of touching him now sacred and intoxicating. 

He let it sink somewhere low inside his stomach and finally lit up a cigarette, closing his eyes in a rare, brief moment of bliss, before the thoughts came back.

He wondered if it was hard for Adam too. If he knew that it was for Ronan, that everything was slowly, steadily catching fire. If he imagined how much of a blessing and a curse that moment was.

He leaned forward, resting his arms on his knees, letting Adam slip away from his gaze.

They stayed in silence for a bit, Ronan smoking, Adam making his skin crawl with fear and excitement just by being there. It was unbearable. 

It wasn't really about the weird infatuation that was inevitably coming back. It was about touch, about feeling close, about every muscle and blood cell pulling him towards him, towards his old self, shouting at him to remember how easy it used to be, even when it wasn't, even when it didn't solve anything but barely managed to be comfortable silence. 

It was about being  _ known _ , about slowly prying open his own ribcage to let everything out, lo let himself out, raw and ungraceful and full of burning things. 

He missed Adam. He missed being his friend, his familiar in the dark, coming undone on the floor of his apartment and laying his head on his bed. He missed being able to talk to someone without receiving stupid and mean comments in return, he missed feeling easy and rested and safe. He missed that quiet and comfortable silence that meant knowing each other well enough to know when not to step in. 

Everything in is life was just covered in broken glass, now. He hadn't really realized until the accident, until what came after, until Kavinsky had whispered those venomous words that same morning.  _ Because you fucking belong to me. _ He was so tired.

“What happened?”

Adam’s voice was so sweet it hurt. How tired did he have to look, for him to notice so easily? How well did he still know how to read him? Did the fear of not knowing him anymore scare him too? 

He could have been talking about everything. Maybe it was the crash, maybe him and Kavinsky, maybe everything that ever happened since him and Gansey left for DC without him. It didn’t matter. 

Adam leaned forward too, sitting in his same position to look him in the eyes. This time Ronan didn't try to hide. He had been so heavy for so long, he was tired of running away.

He was so ready to crumble in his hands. 

“The Pig happened. I fucked that up, like everything else. I couldn’t come home after that.” he whispered, lowering his eyes, heavy and guilty. The memory ached like the moment had, what felt like centuries ago. Everything inside him was tight and painful. It was useless. He didn’t deserve to talk about it, to be forgiven, to rest. He was just too far gone.

When Adam’s fingers gently brushed over his hair he slowly lowered his head until it rested on his own legs, letting him touch it again and again, in what felt like the ghost of repentance. Ronan closed his eyes and breathed in, feeling the warmth soak inside his skin, letting his back shiver from the gentle touch of his fingers.

Then he sat up again, looking at the shitty parking lot, completely dark except for a couple of half-broken lamps. Adam kept gently stroking the back of his neck. He whispered the tiniest thank you to god inside his head. 

“I thought that I was going to be alone forever. Kavinsky was there, he offered me a way out. I didn’t have a chance, it was better than nothing.”

It hurt more, now, to remember it. He was seventeen.

He had wrecked a hole inside the perfect geometry of his universe and himself. There was nothing to do for the first, he tried to fill the second one as well as he could. 

So he drank, he let go, he made the crooked mold life was offering fit. He ran away.

“I thought it could work. But it was bad, it still is and I don’t know what to do.”

It was true. He thought about the Mitsubishi crashing on the interstate, about having sex for the first time high over the wrecked corpse of the Camaro, about fentanyl inside his coffee and cocaine residues on the kitchen table and everything that stung in his life. Nothing was working. Nothing felt good. He stumbled into the dark and he couldn’t get out.

Ronan wanted light, he wanted it so desperately it hurt.

He slowly turned to the side and Adam was looking at him, attentive and understanding, looking like the boy that sat beside him on that apartment floor.

“I’m tired, Adam. I’m just so fucking tired.”

It came out a whisper, even though there was no need for it. He realized it was because he’d kept it inside himself for so long it had become a secret.

Adam just nodded, letting his fingers move slowly, tracing his jawline only to rest on his cheek, in the softest, most needed touch. His eyes were tired and clear, like his own, and Ronan felt less alone, for the first time in years.

“I am too. It has been a long ride, after all. Maybe we should just rest.” 

He said it like it was nothing, but the words were slow, measured and calculated. It meant running away and studying too much and drugs and stress and being apart. It meant finally being able to look someone in the eyes and not being afraid. It meant being close and warm and deprived of masks and responsibilities and the rest of the world. 

It meant everything. And it was enough.

Adam took his hand and led him back inside the room. None of the lamps worked, but it was okay. There were two queen beds, but they laid side by side on the less horrifying one, both letting out a breath that almost felt like a laugh when it creaked. 

Ronan pressed his forehead against Adam’s collarbone and Adam gently held his head between his arms, letting one hand brush over his hair again and again, without saying a word. Everything felt so warm and safe that, for the first time, he just drifted into sleep.

He was home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was long and hard to write. i hope it speaks for itself. i have to thank gigia for reading shittiest one, again and again, and because i love her, and michelle (clawsandbeak) for saving my entire ass with the notes suggestion.  
that's it for today folks i am TIRED.


	8. it doesn’t have to be easy, it just has to be right.

The first thing Ronan saw that morning was the soft fabric of Adam’s shirt. Then came his face, beautiful and still asleep, somewhat peaceful. It was insanely early or, at least, it was by Ronan’s standards. He was used to restlessness, to going out when it was already dark and waking up when the sun was so high up it couldn’t be considered morning anymore.

He knew he had to check his phone, get up, smoke and somewhat shake last night off of him, that it was unfair to bathe in the pale morning sun that filtered through the sheer blinds, that he was stealing Adam's warmth by soaking in it. Still, he didn’t feel like moving, so he just pressed his forehead against his shoulder again, breathing in the sweet scent of his laundry detergent mixed with something else that was just  _him_ .

It wasn't right, probably. Ronan wasn't supposed to cling to Adam like that, to let himself slip back into his life, because the man whose arms were still wrapped around him was heavy and tired and filled with problems and didn't really have the space, in his mind and heart, to fit the spectacular wreck he had become. But he needed it, even just for that night, and that morning, and maybe a couple of weeks. It didn't need to be permanent, it could be just confined to Henrietta. The illusion of coming home, just for one month, just enough to rest his insides and broken bones. 

He didn't have to heal. It didn't even look possible, to be honest. Sleeping at night would have been enough. 

He slowly turned his face to the side, pressing his ear against Adam's chest. His heartbeat was slow and steady, but the gesture, somehow, made Ronan's fast and impossibly loud. He laughed at himself, low and surprised by his own incapability to live and breathe like a normal human being. 

Adam's arms slowly slipped away from the protecting shield that had gifted him the first full night of sleep in probably more than five years as they slowly stretched, but one made a small, crucial stop on the back oh his head in a delicate stroke, before definitely pulling back, as its owner rubbed his face. 

“Ronan. What time is it?”

Ronan didn't know if it was the first-name calling, the tender and beautifully raw and tired indent in Adam's voice or the way he hadn't pulled back, or looked surprised, or treated that moment as anything outside of perfectly normal. He just knew it was beautiful and it made his heart sing. 

“Hell if I know. Do I look like the guy to carry a watch?” he asked, easy and amused where everything before 2p.m. was, usually, just poison.

“You _do_ have a point.” Adam complied, his words sweetly stained by a light chuckle.

Ronan felt his arm loosely around him again, as he checked his watch. He thought he was gonna move away immediately after, instead, Adam just let it flop loosely around his shoulders, his chin resting on top of his head. 

He closed his eyes again, letting the soft pressure of his hold and the gentle raising of his chest cradle him into temporary peace. 

“What time is it?”

“Seven thirty-something. My eyesight definitely hasn’t started to work yet.” 

He liked the way the vibrations of his words echoed inside his ribcage to brush over his ear. He liked, even more, the gentle way he stroked his hair again, his breath slightly altered by a silent chuckle.

They hardly stayed tangled in each other for more than ten minutes, but was plenty for him to feel like the weight of the universe had consistently decreased.

It felt impossibly hard to pull back from that contained paradise and sit up, but he had to. He didn’t have the luxury to ignore the rest of the world anymore.

When he checked his phone, he discovered thirty-seven texts, all from Kavinsky’s number. They were all kind of similar, ranging between  _“the fuck u doin man” _ and  _"can't fucking believe ur blowing Parrish already"_ , because of course they were. Kavinsky couldn’t bear to spend more than two seconds over conversation and emotional depth to manage something deeper and more meaningful than that. He just wanted to bother him, to have him wake up, give him attention, forget everything else. He didn't care about resolving any kind of conflict, he would never call or show that he missed him, that he actually cared about him. Assuming he actually  _did_ .

Maybe he just wanted to be present in his day, a dark, irremovable spot just in the corner of his eye. Usually, that would have been enough to cloud his existence for a while. But Ronan felt rested, now, slightly less desperate. So while his heart did accelerate anxiously and embarrassingly, he managed not to completely lose his mind and just text him back with some information about their position and plans for the day. 

He didn’t expect K to answer, let alone with a phone call, but he didn't have time to focus on the way it made his heart jump. His mind just bombarded him with one simple notion. He couldn’t take it in front of Adam. So he got up from the bed and looked at him, trying to achieve again that way of conversing without words that had been so lovely, once. He didn’t have time to grasp whether it had worked or not, before leaving the room.

The air felt colder than it had the night before, even though he was wearing the same clothes. But he had been distracted, then, too busy being torn and freaking out, now everything was slight, focused anxiety that made him extremely aware of his surroundings and his skin and his guts twisting. He made the jump from calm to anxious in the span of a few seconds. He leaned over the railing and pressed his phone to his ear, looking at the steps that now felt like a sacred space, mourning the brief hours of calm as the storm was coming back. 

“K?”

“’morning, sweet slut.”

Ronan let out a short, anxious breath. He  _did_ prefer the blunt insults to the more subtle, lingering mocking of his compliments, and he was also used to be called any sort of thing, but the sole existence of that phone call made him uneasy.

Because he usually didn’t call. Because it usually meant hospital or jail time or Kavinsky too fucked up to remember that Ronan was also a human being. Because he was being pushed out of that tiny, beautiful safe space back into the real world. Because sometimes it just hurt, without any reason at all. 

“Where are you?” he whispered, careful, his stomach tight to the point of nausea “Are you still around?”

It wasn't just worrying, 7a.m. wasn't that late for him to come home, especially when he wasn't there. It was guilt. Ronan had been perfectly fine up to that point, knowing Kavinsky was around on his own, getting all kind of fucked-up without anyone trustworthy to check on him. He wasn’t thinking about him, about the dangers, about the thousands of ways he could get hurt. He had been selfish and happy, allowing himself the luxury to forget, to act like the owner of the slurred voice now mischievously laughing at him wasn’t really part of his life. But he was.

“Huh? Why you actin’ all worried, now? Thought you were too busy going down on white trash to care.” he uttered, words stained with laughter but still vicious, still filled with a pure, palpable rage that made Ronan, miles away, flinch. His brain stopped working. He decided to elude the question.

“Is everything alright?" he insisted, his voice lower, now, shaky. Kavinsky laughed, because of course he did. Of course, he liked it when mean, angry Ronan Lynch sounded like a boy just for him. The thought made him sick. 

“Just wanted to hear your voice.” 

Ronan hated how amused he sounded. He also hated the relief taking over his body, now, immediately effective. He let out a slow breath, his shoulders relaxing. His voice, however, was still low and pathetic as he spoke, his hands impossibly shaky as he lit up a cigarette.

“Happy, now?” he asked, tired and disgusted by it. 

What a mess he had become. What a disappointing, fragile creature, easy to bend, ready to lay his head on a platter for him, to serve his guts as a delicate side dish. He had been an untameable best, once. Now he was just a shadow on a leash. 

“You bet.”

The whole thing couldn’t have lasted more than five minutes. Still, Ronan came back into the room feeling exhausted. 

Adam stared at him for what felt like forever, calibrating his mind to read Ronan's features, letting his deep eyes right into his soul. He didn't ask, nor said anything, but he understood. It would have been difficult not to, after the way he'd laid the purest display of his anguish for him to read, just the night before. He knew. He just knew. It made him feel slightly better and vaguely scared. 

“I think we should leave this hellhole before someone tries to kill us and find someplace nice for breakfast." he pointed out, calm and understanding in that new, comforting way. 

“Sounds like a plan." he whispered, his gaze brushing over the dirty room, only to indulge in the crumpled sheets they had been laying in minutes earlier. 

Somehow, it felt like a memory from another life, although a sweet, marvelously warm one. 

“You can sing to liven up the mood on the way, if you want.”

Ronan smiled. Maybe it wasn’t just a memory.

They cautiously joked around each other for the rest of that morning, exchanging careful smiles from the table of the cheap diner they had found on the way back to the interstate. It wasn't enough to bring him back to what it was before, but the same went for that night. He couldn't just expect a lifetime of self-inflicted wounds to heal just because an old friend was somewhat welcoming him back into his life. But he could enjoy the moments, for how brief as they were, and bless every chance of feeling like a person again.

\---

Niall Lynch put his entire family in danger by being the biggest motherfucker that ever lived. That was not, however, the reason why he died. 

That was because he was, also, the proudest one. Because he thought he was the smartest, the fastest, the only one to be able to think and scam while the whole world just stood in awe at everything he said. 

Yes, he was special, he was charming and smart and an incredibly capable smooth-talker, he managed to sell and donate to museum and trick hundreds of more-or-less experts into buying paintings he made in the span of a few days inside his own garage and being absent for most of his children's life while still being able to trick Ronan in the idea that he was the best father that ever existed. But that didn’t mean he was unable to make mistakes. He was just incredibly talented at diverting everyone’s attention everywhere but the places he knew to be faulty.

Ronan didn't realize any of that until the morning he almost accidentally stepped on his father's brain matter. Niall Lynch was, also, not very good at being immortal. 

Obvious to everyone but still news to Ronan. His father, up to that point, had been a god, strong and unfathomable and distant. Now he was a bloody corps laying inches from his bare feet.

It didn’t feel real. Nothing about the view of the man he loved the most in the entire universe sprawled upon the ground, limp and lifeless with blood and gore where his face once was, looked real. It was a horrible nightmare, a scene that he’d dreamed time and time again only to wake up terrified and in tears, the kind that made him shamefully climb in his mother’s bad at the ripe age of fifteen. 

His whole body felt unreal, unsteady, weak and tight and trembly. He prayed, in the depth of his soul, for something, anything to wake him up, to make that vibrant and cruel sight disappear. Ronan knew it was real. Everything about that moment was just too strong, clinging inside his stomach, clawing inside his throat and flooding his lungs, too much to be fake. It was everywhere, on his clothes and hands and the thin strip of pale skin left exposed from his elegant button-up. It pooled outside his head like a saint’s halo. It looked impossibly red, made for staining teenager’s minds, to tell them  _I’m real, all of this is real, you will never be the same again_ .

In his most primal, childish impulse, he slowly and carefully walked around the blood and knelt near his father's legs, to shake him gently. To hope. To pray. Ronan's head got dizzy when he realized his body was still warm. It moved easily under his touch. Then everything inside him started to ache, all at once, the reality of it stabbing inside his ribcage to rip his guts out. He didn't remember everything happening, after that, just that at one point his voice was just too tired and hoarse to continue screaming. 

The morning after, nothing felt real except for the smell of blood still clinging to his nose. It was impossible to ignore, more than Declan’s horrifyingly pale face ad Matthew’s red eyes and the way his mother dragged herself through the house like an old puppet. More than the priest and the old family friends and his classmates dressed in black placing careful hands over his shoulders and telling him they were  _there for you, if you ever need anything_ . He hated all of them, ferociously and blindly and desperately. He didn't want pity or condolences or love. He wanted everyone to leave and everything to burn to the ground. He wanted to crawl back into his parents' bed and sleep until it was all over and his father was coming home again. He wanted his grief to stain the walls and the roof and the entirety of Virginia. He wanted the world to stop and just look at the closed casket as it was lowered into the ground. He wanted everything to be as irremediably broken as he felt. He wanted to scream and bleed and have everyone witnessing the spectacle of his pain. He wanted to disappear. 

The same day, when all guests had finally left, Declan sat on Ronan’s bed and told him  _why_ exactly, he had to see his Niall Lynch’s bloody corpse on the concrete. 

His father, a talented artist and even more talented conman, had been too proud of the traces of himself he'd seen in his middle son not to capitalize on them too. And so, on the side, while fooling heirs and mobsters out of their money with curated replicas, he sold his own child's paintings, violently beautiful works easy to attribute to some 1890's penniless Parisian artist that  _will be worth millions soon_ , he swore,  _you’ll feel like a madman for missing this chance_ . He sold anything he could put his hands on, every lazy sketch or careful portrait or abstract and beautiful messes. It was easy, with all the credit he'd earned himself in the past, even one-time costumers hanged from his lips. 

And then Niall Lynch got drunk and bragged about how talented his son was, how easy conning Americans out of their money had been. Maybe the wrong person heard. Maybe everyone that heard was evil and twisted and ready to see an asshole like that bite the dust. The results were obvious. It was just destined to happen. 

“He couldn’t fucking charm his way out of an early grave, Ronan.” he whispered, venomous and angry. 

Maybe, things didn’t go as Declan had planned, that night. Maybe he hadn’t planned anything at all and just needed to tell him as soon as he found out – because, of course, Declan knew, Declan always knew, knowing was the only thing he could do to feel his father somehow close to him. 

But Ronan just couldn’t fucking wait to divert all of his anger and pain into punching something until they both bled.

Years later, he more or less realized that was his brother's way to try and make him feel better. That Declan was also an angry teenager destroyed by his father's death and enraged by the sight of his family crumbling because of a man he deemed undeserving. That he was mad at every ounce of excruciating pain every single one of them felt, because he loved them to death, as he loved his father and the burning hate he felt towards him. 

At that moment, though, he only knew rage and pain, both made stronger by knowing that was the last night they were going to spend at the Barns. 

\---

One hour before reaching Henrietta, Ronan realized he was excited to come back and see the Barns again. Not in the nervous and terrified way he had been to meet Adam for coffee, neither the more desperately optimistic way he had been for that trip, it was something entirely different. It was real and grounded, that mixed joy and fear and longing for something familiar, for the only physical place he'd ever been able to call home. He knew it wasn't gonna be easy, that pain and grief were still stored in every cupboard and under carpets and dust, but he had been waiting for it. It didn't matter how heavy and complicated it was going to be, it didn't have to be perfect, nothing in his life was anyway. He was ready to have his heart broken by the memories, he just needed to know they were there, that some old and forgotten part of him was too, still clinging to them, young and unafraid. 

Still, his body knew some part of it was wrong. He was jumpy, excessively aware of everything surrounding him, the wind and the engine murmuring and the car slightly trembling and his own breathing and heartbeat. He drummed his fingers on his own knees, desperately in need for a smoke or a beer or everything at all with the ability to calm his nerves. He was used to being nervous and feeling weird, but the absence of remedies made it harder to cope with. 

Adam had noticed it too, his eyes kept jumping to his fingers, then his shoulders, then his own uneasy gaze. He pressed his lips together, probably asking himself if he should allow him to smoke, probably realizing that condoning a shitty habit was only a good move in the short run. Smart, wonderfully thoughtful, just enough to make his heart go slightly faster and adding the bothering sensation of blood running through his entire system to the mess he already was. 

He let out a slow, labored breath and leaned back on his seat, closing his eyes for a moment and lightly massaging the bridge of his nose, hoping that breathing slowly could be enough to calm him down. But how was he supposed to? He was coming back to the Barns, his long lost home, with Adam that had held him through the night and made his heart race while his boyfriend was still in New York doing his best to make the whole city burn. Somehow, the situation had completely slipped from his hands and turned into something else. The worst part, though, was that he couldn't stop. That he had to let himself be comforted by Adam's touch on his shoulder and stabbed right in the guts by his concerned look, that he still loved any part of that, how upset it made him, body and soul, how alive it made him feel.

“How long have you been gone?” Adam asked, quietly, either to divert his attention from whatever thought was clouding his mind or to point it towards something more concrete, less scary.

Ronan didn’t like to think about the last time he had been there. It was one in the long list of things he regretted doing. 

"Since I left Monmouth." he whispered, carefully cutting around the actual day, what had happened before, what would happen later. Ronan knew that he had left another part of himself at the Barns. It was the small, fragile one that still believed in salvation. He liked the idea of brushing his fingers over it, to cradle it gently between his arms and let it back inside his chest, the same way something else had slipped back into him the night before, from the delicate touch of Adam's hands right under his skull. 

He liked the idea of picking up the pieces of himself, no matter how different and crooked the end result was going to look. He just wanted the light to pass through the cracks. 

Adam didn't ask for explanations on why he had come back at that time, on why he hadn't before, on why he had left Monmouth like a thief. Once again, he just understood. Once again, Ronan thanked him for that. 

“It’s gonna be dusty as hell.” Adam joked, the irony delicate in his tone, enough to try and lighten the weight on his chest without being inappropriate.

“I doubt that. The will cited something like twenty million just for maintenance." he pointed out, a weak but definitely existent smile brushing over his lips. 

“Holy sh-” it was barely a whisper, paired with a slight furrowing oh his eyebrows, but he noticed. And felt the sly, focused need to kiss him. 

He laughed it off. 

Luckily, there was no time for that kind of thoughts, when Adam parked his car in the driveway. It was a careful, slow motion, that had nothing to do with the psychotic crooked way he'd found the Mitsubishi three years before. It felt eerily right. 

Ronan didn’t get out right away. He waited, watching from the rolled-down window the endless fields and the familiar silhouettes of the buildings, breathing in the nostalgia and the memories and the pain. He had missed every detail of it, exasperating them inside his dreams, replaying them again and again in his memory like an old cassette tape. It was different, now, it was real. It was beautiful. 

When he actually managed to find the strength to leave the car, he still moved slowly towards the house, his chest heavy with guilt and love as he slowly turned the key, his hand trembling over the door handle, his heart stopping as he paced the first step inside. The familiar scent hit him with such a bundle of memories and emotions that he froze, speechless and broken as his brain failed to process all of them, as his heart struggled to pump blood into his system. 

Yes, he had been there before, but that was different. He had been hangover then, filled with shame and regret, desperate to run away from every picture and piece of furniture and light pattern over a carpet. He had been there, but not as himself, completely unprepared. 

Ronan breathed in everything, now, the sensations and the memories and the old sweet longing they brought up inside him. He took in the scent of wood and grass and dried paint, let his eyes lovingly brush over very painting, every family picture, every piece of furniture or electronics or toy. He moved carefully through the ground floor, letting his finger on the smooth surface of the kitchen table, opening drawers and cupboards and turning old ornaments around, placing every object back into his memory and bathing in the warmth it all brought inside his soul. 

Adam was still somewhat near him, far enough to let him explore on his own, close enough to let him know he wasn’t alone. When Ronan turned towards him to look, the sight surprised him. The last person to see the Barns for the first time, since his father’s funeral, had been Kavinsky, bored and disrespectful, the perfect companion for the Ronan that wanted to run away.

Adam was different. He looked at the glorious mess of his childhood home with awe and intrigue, his steps light as if in a church aisle, his eyes careful and indulging as in a museum. He got close to paintings and family pictures alike, smiling or furrowing his eyebrows or taking a step back, taking everything in, letting the mismatched and bizarre furnishing charm him in its sweet, lovely glory.

He stopped in front of one of the bigger paintings, a replica of Botticelli's Saint Sebastian. 

“Where did your parents find all of these?” he asked, referring to all of them but still looking right at the handsome and careless face of the saint. 

Ronan remembered looking up to it as a child and struggling to grasp the figure in its entirety, forced to focus on the details one at a time, in a weird and unsettling process he still repeated daily. Now, standing in front of the canvas, he could look right at the man’s expression, at the dark eyes that used to capture him to the point of enchantment as a child. He felt something eerily similar, as he turned to the side to catch the sight of Adam’s perfect face and attentive gaze. He also forgot to answer for a solid ten seconds.

“Nowhere." he answered quickly, making it sound incredibly ominous and weird, so he had to add "My father painted all of them." 

He didn't know whether he could say it out loud or not, he didn't even think about it, too focused on how easy it was, for once, naming his father without feeling his guts trying to crawl outside his throat. 

Adam made that beautiful surprised face again, but it was genuinely impressed, now, which made it even more lovable and kissable. He  _had_ to laugh that though off again.

Adam looked back at the painting and Ronan struggled to do the same, but succeeded. 

“This was my favorite growing up.” he said, pointing at the canvas with his chin, to keep the conversation alive and his very uncomfortable brain back into a safe space. 

The problem was, that already  _was_ his safe space, the feelings he was used to basking into, the slight murmur in his soul that accompanied him through half of his teenage years. 

“This was your favorite painting _as a child?_”

It  _sounded_ weird, now that he was saying it like that, looking at the naked, proudly displayed body of the saint, unfazed by the arrows planted in his flesh. Ronan remembered staring intensely at the one going through his tight, with deep and unexplainable fascination. 

“Pretty much, yeah.”

It was an understatement. Declan had tried to take it down just to upset him, once.

“Saint Sebastian?” he took a pause, looking right into his eyes, clearly fighting to avoid bursting into laughter “Patron of gays?”

“What the f-”

“Like, not _canonically_, the community kind of claimed him." he explained, but it was too late. 

Ronan looked at the painting again, thinking about his younger self, fascinated to the point of drawing it inside old book covers and under the desk of his room. It made sense, now.

“I’m sorry, maybe you find it offensive or-”

“No.” he whispered, letting Adam see the sly, deeply amused smile that was widening over his lips “I kinda see it.”

He didn’t have the strength to climb the stairs to the first floor, that night. They slept on the couch, together, after spending the day exploring weird and forgotten art pieces and cooking horribly with whatever they managed to get at the nearest gas station. 

That night, Ronan dreamt of saints and memories and good things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry it took so goddamn long, life and vacation ending and exams getting closer and me doubting myself got in the way, but I hope it's long enough to be worth the wait.  
I have to thank, like every time, my best friend for reading the horrifying first drafts and still pushing me to keep writing, no matter how big of a monstruosity I was feeding her. I also need to thank the screaming gfs for reminding me that it's not a complete failure to take some time before posting again. the next updates probably will all resemble this one, since I have a trip and a shit ton of exams planned september through november, but I'll do my best to make them good.  
thank you for reading up to this points and for everyone who commented and left kudos. last chapter got a lot more feedback than usual and it made me so happy it's really impossible to explain. I hope you like this one too!


	9. what the fuck are you doing? you were supposed to be the smart one.

Adam Parrish was good at getting on trains he couldn’t jump out of. Both his body and his mind got used to things fast, it didn’t matter if it was the constant anxiety of walking through his own home as it was a minefield – slowly, with his heart racing, holding his breath – or the school-then-shift-then-shift-then-study-then-school rhythm that he kept up during most of his high school years or the impending, tiring wish to disappear. If he found a way to make something work once he would do it again and again and again, it didn’t matter if it was unhealthy or the aftermath made him sick or there was a better way of doing it.

When, after writing an entire essay in one night, he found out that in the particular spot before 1 and 4 am his thoughts, while often grammatically incorrect, came out smoother and faster, he started to write all of his papers in the dead of the night, even weeks before they were due, because that was what worked. After pulling his first college all-nighter, he realized he was mostly functioning after a two-hour nap, as long as he had another couple of them during the day, so he started repeating that pattern so often he could count his monthly full night of sleep on one hand. When another student complimented the beautiful vintage watch Gansey gifted him from his birthday, he found lying and saying it was a family heirloom less humiliating than every kind of truth. Because now in a stranger's eyes Adam Parrish had the kind of family to own heirlooms to pass on to their only, beloved son, and not the one to beat half of his earing out of him. It felt good and so he lied again and again and again until he got used to lying too, until it became a timed activity like studying and sleeping and pretending to have a social life. He had perfectly scheduled every part of his day to maximum efficiency and calculated the exact rhythm to which he had to consume coffee and protein bars to keep him going. 

He was too self-aware not to know he had a tendency for compulsion, but he didn't really care as long as it brought him where he needed to be. That's why he had never drunk, or smoked, or tried that particular kind of stimulant that helps me prep the entire thing in one sitting, man, I swear because he knew he wouldn’t have been able to stop. He knew that if a couple of beers would have been able to help him relax just once on his – also scheduled – weekly free night, he would have done it again the next time, and the one after that, before moving it to the few hours he spent with his friend every afternoon and before he went to sleep until drinking became a staple for his free time. He knew that a successful nerve-relaxing cigarette once would turn into overflowing ashtrays everywhere and every item of clothing he owned reeking of smoke in the span of a month. If one stimulant, for just one night, could help him study faster, he knew he’d never stop, even if got bad and difficult and required money. 

Adam knew he was born an addict, that living on a battlefront had normalized striving for everything that felt even remotely better than awful and learning careful choreography to avoid bruised patches on the light canvas of his skin. He had done his best to use it to his advantage, to become the best and brightest and fastest because he had long given up on being the sanest and all of that hell had to be for something. Training his body for an ongoing war _had_ to have its upsides. And it did. His grades were stellar, his friends adored him, he was a god in everyone’s eyes.

All while losing his mind and waking up with strands of hair on his pillow and his entire body almost punctually giving up on him. 

He realized something was wrong when he lost his mind over a misspelled date. The test was just two days earlier than anticipated, had he been even remotely rational he would have realized that he still had plenty of time to prepare. But Adam hadn't been rational for a long time, so instead, he just broke. Instead, he just didn't sleep or eat until he was even with his schedule, just to later beg not to be carried to the hospital when he collapsed on the way back to his dorm room. Because he couldn’t afford it. Because he couldn’t miss the deadlines. Because everything was more important than his health and less than his grades. And there he was, Adam Parrish, model student and magnetic personality, lying on the floor with dark under-eyes and sick-pale skin and three-day-old clothes, showing his true colors by twitching and covering his face and screaming not to be touched, not again, never again. His body, his mind, his entire system had given up on him. He couldn’t keep his addictions in check without falling apart. 

Yet he did, again, going through the rest of the semester like nothing had happened, studying and remaining on the top of every class and kindly convincing all of his friends that it was a bad fever, really, that had turned him into that unfamiliar and desperate creature.

Exams came and went, Adam's grades incredible as they had always been, his sleep schedule still horrifying as ever, his friends fooled by his charming facade and funny jokes. But he carried a different weight inside his chest, something that didn't leave him, no matter how good he was or how fun he had on his scheduled free hours. 

It was wrong, everything about it was wrong, he was wasting himself and ruining his youth over empty accomplishments. Skyrocketing at the top of the statistics didn't make him an excellent success story of overcoming abuse, but a pathetic war veteran barricading himself behind praise and high grades to hide from demons born from his own mind.

There was no glory in destroying himself to success. It wasn’t spectacular or inspiring, just incredibly sad. He got high on compliments and praise, converting it into love and understanding and everything he lacked. Something he couldn't find in study halls or from professors that would forget him as soon as they handed him back his final. 

He thought about it constantly, through his last exams and then in the weeks that followed him, as he tutored and tried to give others what he had gained consuming himself for fifty bucks a lesson. He thought about it during his week to New York, while forcing himself to have fun during research and secretly hoping the tall, handsome ghost from his past that lived there would somehow come to him to whisper meaning back into his life. That didn’t happen.

But he _did_ find him, as lost as he’d ever been, skinnier and paler and tired, with a bruised face matching a bruised soul. Ronan Lynch, shaky hands and child-like eyes, had looked exactly like a ghost and exactly like Adam felt.

He didn’t want to forgive him, he wasn’t even sure he wanted to see him, yet everything inside him went quiet as soon as he met his gaze again. He didn’t really know why. Maybe he was shamefully glad to see he was also doing a poor job at being human. Maybe he reminded him of Henrietta, where things were bad in a still manageable way and he didn’t feel constantly alone. Maybe he was just glad, in the purest and most unfiltered part of his soul, to see he was still alive and breathing and Adam wasn't alone in the universe anymore. 

He just knew he needed him so badly that nothing mattered anymore, not his pride, not the Camaro, not the fact that the Ronan in front of him wasn't the one that used knock at his apartment's door at 10 p.m. without asking for permission or forgiveness or anything at all. That Ronan had once been an addiction too, something that made breathing easier and the world lighter without any side effect.

He was different now, though. He had been observing him carefully, during the weeks they had spent together at the Barns, memorizing the purple of his under-eyes and the oddly charming chipped lateral incisor and the black silhouettes of his new tattoos that now marked his arms and hands and god knew what other parts of his body. He had grown accustomed to the sound oh his bare feet on the floor tiles, to the tone of his voice, lower and raspier than he remembered, to the delicate and secret smile he'd let himself slip into late at night, when the lights were low enough he thought he couldn't possibly notice. His face was still stern and somewhat angry, but he didn’t look mean as he had once. There was something gentler to him, careful, the kind of softening that came from understanding, from being hurt again and again to the point of breaking, of not wanting to be involved in any part of the process ever again. Adam was already accustomed to it, but the thought of Ronan’s spectacular rage being smothered in the same way was heartbreaking.

Sometimes it hurt looking at him, at his naked ankles, at the tattoos staining the curve of his neck, at his fingers covered in small scars and burns. Everything about it was softer in a painful way, but Adam kept looking at him anyway, because everything about him was also incredibly lovely.

The Ronan that sang Cascada in the car to cheer him up had the scent and smile of the boy that sat on his apartment floor, exposed just enough to be close, clownish just enough to make life look easy. The one that he’d held between his arms that same night was a different beast, a tired man, eager to feel better, to find light and meaning and rest. Both of them coexisted in the handsome flesh of his old friend as he witnessed, once again, the might of Ronan Lynch, that now could talk about drugs and dance and choked on the smoke sitting on the porch with him because they were laughing way too hard. He was a complicated creature, yet incredibly easy to understand. He had laid his insides bare, ripping carefully the thick layer of his skin to show Adam every muscle and internal bleeding and aching wound. He wasn’t the boy that used his pain as fuel, he didn’t splatter it on the walls or wore it over his face as battle paint but brought it in his pockets, apologizing if it was too visible through his ripped jeans. 

Adam had already felt an unwanted but familiar warmth in his chest when piercing blue eyes had looked up at him from that disgusting motel bed. He had already given up on being sane by holding him to his chest again, hiding in the thin layer of mystery and confusion early mornings brought with them, because his body just asked for it after the way his voice had creaked the night before, but he had to keep himself in check. 

As Ronan got out to talk to the phone, to his  actual piece of shit  boyfriend, Adam told himself he couldn’t be his newest addiction. That it might feel good to let himself bare his own soul next to him, as they had once, but he was playing with a different kind of fire, now. Everything was temporary. 

He wasn’t going to stay. Adam himself, probably, wanted the kind of love and attention Ronan looked so eager to give, more than Ronan himself.

And then he came back and looked at him like the loneliest creature to ever walk the earth and his heart sank deep inside his chest. He couldn’t avoid getting close. It wasn’t pity or loneliness or despair, it was his soul going back to his old habits, it was Ronan Lynch being, once again, the only place that ever felt like home.

The feeling didn’t weathered as days went by. Instead, it just got stronger every morning as he casually left a cup of coffee for him without asking, every time he heard him humming trashy pop beats under the shower or saw the way he moved slowly and almost imperceptibly in a hint of dance while feeding the cows. It got stronger as they held a discussion about the best kind of bread in the supermarket and argued about _Inception_ and remembered how fucking annoying that one teacher was. It got stronger every evening, as they both spent hours silently laying in a perfect puzzle over the couch, Adam working on his thesis and Ronan listening to music and drawing, all the time, with intense eyes that spilled love and grief and feelings again and again. It made it difficult for him to actually get some work done, the sight was unfamiliar, intriguing. 

He hadn’t known Ronan had something like that inside him, yet he knew it had to be something old, something he probably had carried with him his entire life, his hand was steady and swift, his concentration absolute, his works masterpieces, whether they were portraits of things around him or horrifying and fascinating creatures that had to belong to nightmares or dreams or acid-induced realities. Adam thought he was being somewhat secretive by taking a peek from time to time, that Ronan was just doing what he always did and forgot he had never actually cared to show that part of him.

Then, on the third day, he met his eyes while sneakingly trying to look again. They were beautiful and intense as they always were, but there was something different, vulnerable and aware. He was letting him know. He was letting him see what shape his soul could take, baring to his gaze the most tangible and raw version of himself.

After that, his entire body was set ablaze every time he got near. He was already too close.

Yet, he didn’t stop. He let the both of them grow closer, his arm wrapping around Ronan’s shoulders and Ronan’s arm wrapping around his, his fingers lightly brushing over dark hair growing back and Ronan’s slowly tracing the lines of his palms. Their legs touched on the couch during the day and tangled on Matthew’s bed during the night, without ever asking or explaining or questioning whether it was right. They were playing with fire, dancing around it, close enough to steal all its warmth, never enough to burn.

Adam didn’t feel guilty, most of the time. It wasn’t inherently wrong, they were friends, they weren’t crossing lines, everything made absolute sense as they were doing it. Did it bother him that Kavinsky called, usually in the dead of the night, and Ronan was always nervously ready to get up and answer? Of course it did, because Kavibsy was a toxic asshole and Ronan looked empty every time he came back. Was he fixing Niall Lynch’s old BMW, to make sure it ran smoothly after years of being abandoned in the garage without any reason at all? He was, but that could be just him finding a way to thank the friend that was housing him while he waited for Blue to come back. Could it be possible to look at someone the way he looked at Ronan, fascinated and completely in awe, or the way Ronan looked at him, aware and religiously adoring, and still think any of that was just an old friendship, stronger than time and on a level so deep their souls felt irremediably tied to each other? 

It was. But Adam knew that wasn’t the case. He know what longing felt like and he longed for every part of Ronan, from the delicate touch of his fingers on his back to his horrible jokes, from his greasy and delicious scrambled eggs to the pale flesh where his neck connects to his clavicles, from his noisy laugh to the glimpse of raw desire he saw reflected in his eyes in the morning, before he could hide it. He longed for his lips, again and again, to the point they filled his dreams and clouded his judgment.

  
  


\---

  
  


Adam noticed that there was something different between the Ronan everyone saw and the one _he_ saw. It wasn’t really that big of a difference, to be honest, he didn’t even know if there was a difference at all or he was just imagining stuff to feel somewhat special, but it was _something_ . To be honest, the sole existence of a Ronan that was exclusively his felt different, special, in need to be kept a secret in order to keep the balance of their group friendship intact. Sure, Gansey and Ronan had time alone together too, but they were also roommates, that was normal and expected. Also, their dynamics allowed it: they had met when both were closer to being babies than adults, were used to being around each other, aware of what dose of respect they needed and strict about how far they could go before damaging something. 

But Adam had just begun appreciating Ronan’s presence, after months of considering him one of the many clauses of being Gansey’s friend, when he started to show up at his apartment. Going from constantly arguing and bothering each other with the occasional – and always surprisingly successful or at least fun – joint idea to having him at his place, sitting on the ground or moving around without no real purpose, wasn’t as weird as he had thought he could be. For a complete asshole, Ronan could be incredibly respectful, and he usually was every time he came over, never making more noise than he had to, never staying longer than appropriate and never demanding anything at all.

Basically, he had no use of being there. Sure, he usually made at least a couple of jokes at his expense, but they weren’t enough to justify his presence. Yet there he was, multiple times every week, knocking at his door, always at the right hour, after the end of his shift and before he was too tired to sustain the thoughts of having guests – although Ronan never felt like a guest, fitting right in the quiet and tight space of his apartment without ever looking awkward or out of place.

Maybe it was weird that he was there. Surely it was even weirder that Adam didn’t question his presence at all, by why would he? Ronan was the reason he had gotten that apartment in the first place, he wasn’t loud or nosy or obnoxious and, sometimes, he genuinely enjoyed having company, as a seventeen-year-old living alone for the first time. 

One night, though, Ronan’s presence went from tolerable habit to absolute blessing. 

Adam had been losing his eyesight over and English paper for two hours, when Ronan had casually reminded him about how much of a  complete pain in the ass  studying for the physics final had been. A final whose existence had completely disappeared from Adam’s mind and was coming back to him just now, at 11 p.m., while his brain cells were already completely burned out.

He had cursed between his teeth and slowly pulled out his textbook, then his notes, then the flashcards he used to get over everything quickly. Except he couldn't. The same words he had already studied for hours and was supposed to know by heart at that point, looked new and confusing to his extremely tired mind. It was a disaster, he _felt_ like a disaster and, as he always did, just resorted to abandoning his head over the desk and letting out a low growl as his fingers tangled in his hair, twisting and slightly pulling in a nervous gesture that was also extremely common for that kind of situation.

“Jesus fuck, Parrish, I didn’t know it was “freak the fuck out” o’ clock.” 

Adam had completely forgotten that Ronan was still there. Maybe because he was way too tired to think. Maybe because his presence there was so natural that by then he fitted right in. Though, it probably was the time for him to leave, since Adam doubted he was going to get any saner with a text planned for the next day.

He straightened up on the chair and turned in the general direction his voice had come from, only to notice he was on his side, now, leaning forward to look at what he was desperately trying to rehash from his mind.

“You haven’t studied yet?” he asked, in a calm tone that didn’t hold judgment. And of course it didn’t, it was Ronan, he barely even cared about tests and studying and school at all before Adam moved to St. Agnes. But he had, these latest months, while everyone pretended not to notice it was because he couldn't possibly waste the chance Adam had given to him by pressing charges on his own father.

Still, the tone of his voice sometimes managed to make the mess that was tangling inside his brain feel less outrageous.

“I have. I just can’t remember anything.” he whispered, letting his head flop once again, this time over the textbook.

Ronan didn’t answer but began gently brushing his fingers between notes. He pointed his index over a green card,  Newton’s first law  written over it.

“I know this one. It’s the one about every action having its own reaction with equal strength or some shit.” he declared, so proudly that Adam almost felt bad for having to prove him wrong.

“Equal in _magnitude_ . That is the third law, though.” he pointed out, unable to refrain from the faintest smile.

“Are you shitting me?”

“The first one states that every object in motion stays in motion unless a force slows it down.” he explained, flipping the card over to show the answer written behind it “Look.”

Ronan looked mildly displeased for one moment, then fell into his sly, mischievously amused smile. 

“So you_ do _ remember something.”

Adam couldn’t believe he got played by Ronan fucking Lynch. He also couldn't believe that his whole body suddenly felt pounds and pounds lighter. 

That night, as they spent half the time he thought he would have needed going over laws and formulas and horrible jokes, he learned the following things.

Ronan Lynch, when prepared, was actually surprisingly brilliant. He knew how to phrase even the wordiest and boring concept in a way that made it easier to remember, as someone with, apparently, the shortest attention span in the entire universe, regarding academical situations. This made the process of going over things with him so interesting and entertaining it didn’t feel like studying at all.

Ronan Lynch was also ten times kinder and more thoughtful and anyone would have ever given him credit for, but probably liked the thrill of looking like an asshole way more. He looked him straight in the eyes and talked with skilfully concealed childish excitement about things he liked. This was, sometimes, distracting, but also surprisingly charming.

Ronan Lynch, first and foremost, had the ability to carefully sort out the black mass of his anxieties and insecurities, to make life feel manageable and the monoliths of his insecurities disappear, which was something he didn’t realize until later that night, when, for the first time in probably his entire life, Adam fell asleep with a clear mind and a light heart.

  
  


\---

  
  


Blue arrived in Henrietta, riding shotgun in Noah’s car, almost three weeks after them. While Adam didn’t really have restrictions on when to leave, since he was done with his exams and could work on his thesis and email his professor from everywhere, she had to skilfully complain to his boss and make up an entire fake illness to steal a whopping ten days at the end of December. Which meant that while she made most of the trip with Gansey, she refused to waste two of them in D.C. with his family, something Adam was extremely grateful for, since he couldn’t wait to see her.

To be honest, that was kind of an understatement. Blue, while part of the worrying crowd he carefully kept out of his personal struggle with being alive, was incredibly dear to his heart, in a way that maybe wasn’t soul-crushing like his peculiar bond with Ronan, but was pure, born from deep and sincere feelings that had gotten stronger with time. Adam couldn’t still bring himself to show her the broken and rotten bits, scared by how intense her light was and how small and mean he would have looked in comparison, but she still had a way of understanding, of trying to get around his walls, of helping him even if he didn’t ask, even if it was for nothing.

Since Gansey had also moved to Cambridge to attend Harvard, they had seen each other at least once a week, sneaking texts and short phone calls between work shifts and study sessions. After he’d completed his exams, though, their occasional meetings had turned into daily visits, in his dorm rooms or at Blues’ job or anywhere with enough space to talk, on good days and bad ones, whether they had things to talk about or just needed to enjoy each other’s company for a while. He felt different with her, they both did, seen and understood in a would that was way too big and didn’t really care.

That would have made not seeing her for three weeks a big deal even if nothing had happened during that time. And Adam knew far too well that his days at the Barns had been far from uneventful, even if most of it had happened in silence, in the deepest, most secretive part of his soul.

He didn’t need to tell her anything, neither he wanted to, but he had to see her again. To talk to her, step out from the dream-like atmosphere of the last few days, go back into the real world where telling right from wrong was easy and tricking himself was not.

Ronan wasn’t as excited to meet her, though, which made sense, since the last time he’d seen her it was before the whole mess with the Pig and he was absolutely sure Blue would have been the most difficult to convince he was worth giving another shot. But, as Adam had predicted, he was wrong.

Because he knew Blue and Blue had a lot in common with Ronan, in the sense they were both hot-headed savages with a sensitive soul and an outrageously big heart. And they had talked about him, both as confused teenagers and moderately understanding twenty-somethings, after he had left and in the month leading to their trip. For how angry and determined she looked, she wasn’t really mad. And maybe none of them had ever been, maybe they just felt impossibly hurt.

Whatever the reason had been, Blue welcomed him back right away with a light punch to his arm and an expression that didn’t even try to look actually mean.

“Adam, you didn’t tell me he looked even more like an asshole, now.” she pointed out, a hint of a smile that felt sweet and forgiving.

The genuine surprise in Ronan’s eyes pleased him and hit him right in the guts at the same time. As they stood outside Nino’s, Adam remembered the terrified look in his eyes outside the hospital, hid fidgety hands on the coffee table, the way he had tiptoed around him, careful, expecting poison and fire and blood.

Once again, he asked himself what he’d missed, what could have happened to the raging fearless boy he used to know. He was slowly crawling out of Ronan’s face, now, letting all of them see a glimpse of himself, as a sly smile crossed his lips.

“You look maggoty as I remember, Sargent.” he replied, looking daringly into her eyes, now, as he’d just remembered how it was done.

It felt even easier with Noah, way too tired already to keep grudges and let old friends go.

Adam let himself feel the warmth those moments irradiated and soaked in it for the entire evening as the four of them sat at the same table, laughing and catching up and bumping shoulders. He had let himself be completely mesmerized by them, his old best friends, almost reunited, almost looking like they once had. Many things were different, all of them knew, there was an enormous black hole where Gansey once sat, there was Ronan, different, tired, changed. There was the fact that Adam couldn't stop looking at him, that he laughed harder than he ever had at his jokes and shivered every time their knees touched.

They talked for hours, pretending like nothing was wrong, or lost, or irremediably damaged.

That was until Blue looked up at him, heavy, violently truthful. They were both sitting under the old tree behind 300 Fox Way, watching in the distance as Ronan and Noah fought each other with old branches like hyperactive children. Adam had been filling her in on the last few weeks, as he normally would, gracefully avoiding talking about how weird and sometimes surreal everything felt.

She looked uneasy and maybe she had been the entire time, even as she exchanged playfully insults with Ronan and laughed at his jokes and complained in her adorably furious way about work and society and everything. Maybe she’d just played along. Maybe she had just wanted to give him that night.

“Adam, what are you doing?”

Her voice was calm as she posed the question, her hands steadily holding both of his tight in her lap, her eyes deep and worried.

It wasn’t a scolding, it wasn’t even a warning, she was just genuinely voicing her concerns.

He felt his stomach clenching, his heart beating faster. He wasn’t ready as he thought. He wasn’t ready at all.

“Whatever it is that you’re talking about, you’re reading too much into it.” he whispered.

He was lying. But he also didn’t want to hear it from her, or it would have felt real.

“Am I, now?” she _did_ look pissed, now.

Adam opened his mouth to talk, but felt too guilty about being caught to say anything. Of course he couldn’t lie to her, that was why he wanted to meet her in the first place. When you do something bad you 

to get caught, even if you try to run away and burn the evidence and turn your back on the handsome friend which sometimes looks at you from the porch because you know otherwise you’ll give up immediately on trying to conceal everything.

Maybe something about how defeated he looked made her step back a little.

“You have to be careful. I know he means well, you both do, but the fact that you barricaded yourselves into a bubble doesn’t mean that the world has ceased to exist.”

It was true. It didn’t matter if he woke up with Ronan and fell asleep beside him and spent the whole day looking at the curve of his back and the length of his lashes. That was just one of the Ronan that existed. He got a glimpse of the other ones, often, every time he answered his phone or talked about New York or murmured, frustrated and sad, in his sleep. And he was just one of the many Adams he could be, with him, the less calculating one, the less nervous, the less mean, the less angry.

But he was doing his best to care for his soul, to prepare for when everything was over. Ronan was just running away again.

“I know that.”

“You don’t, or you wouldn’t look at him like that.”

He couldn't really say anything in response to that. He already knew it was happening, he couldn't deny the obvious. He didn’t even know what it was, but it was too much.

“What do you think will happen when you both go back? He lives in New York, Adam, last time I checked he was getting into a car crash with Joseph  Kavinsky.”

Adam held his breath, now. He thought about Ronan frantically murmuring from outside the room, drenched in panic and anxiety, for minutes that felt like hours before coming back beside him looking like something had just been stripped out of him. That was what he was coming back to. That was what waited for him at home after Adam had spent weeks stroking his head and whispering dumb jokes tangled with him under the sheets. It wasn’t leading to anything. He was just letting him rest before he came back to everything that had left him black and blue. Good but not enough to chase away the big bad wolf.

It was starting to hurt. He bit the inside of his cheek, then shrugged.

“That wasn’t his fault.” he whispered, firm because it was true, defeated because it was also not enough. Because Ronan still ran with Kavinsky and lived in his apartment and bled for him willingly like he was a mighty god. Because if someone got fucked up enough to crash his car and leave you permanently scarred the right response wasn’t staying and forgiving and answering his calls in the dead of the night.

“I know it wasn’t.” her voice got even lower, now, her eyes even brighter, kinder “It’s still not your duty putting him back together.”

Adam breathed in slowly, then wrapped her up into his arms, pulling her close enough her head could press against his chest, as he rested his chin over it.

He knew what she meant. He let Ronan into his car and life knowing he was damaged and tired. It didn’t matter, then, when he just needed a kindred spirit to feel the world decrease in size, but it mattered now, that he was letting himself get hooked on him too. It mattered now that every good moment with Ronan was so beautiful it made hurt more how bad he could get, even if he tried not to notice and give him space, even if he just ached in silence and brushed his hair with light fingers until he fell asleep or got almost normal again. It mattered now that Adam felt everything he felt, that his soul burned for him constantly.

He didn’t want to hear the rest, yet he did.

“You can’t go on like this or you’ll get yourself hurt.”

Adam also knew that. That he’d just stopped hurting constantly, that he was still working on himself because he refused to give up, to die and miss his chance at a good life because he was too busy finding meaning and recognition in things that didn’t matter, that he was still learning to love himself even if he didn’t do anything that day, that he still struggled running away from memories and fears and his own reflection.

He couldn't take in someone else’s damage. He couldn’t be Ronan’s crutch, even if he desperately wanted to, even if his entire body ached in need from just looking at him.

He couldn't afford it. He couldn't save someone else, he had barely saved himself.

“And what should I do? Leave him like that? Pretend nothing happened?”

His voice was creaky and low, now, and he didn’t try to hide it. He was too old to keep hiding his pain under carpets and cars. He closed his eyes and felt Blue’s arms tighten around him. She knew. Even without seeing how tired Ronan’s eyes could look, how many habits and small ticks he’d developed, how he reacted to being touched suddenly, his whole body flinching and then going still, like he was used to just let things happen.

“Why did you ran away from home, Adam?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have no idea why this came out so long, i just kept writing and writing and somehow it got to this. and since this boy was an extremely long one, i have to thank gigia twice, since she also got sent twice the amount of drafts with revisions and everything. writing about adam is extremely scary for me, i hope i pulled it off.  
i'm lowkey happy i managed to put out something big, though, because i probably will have no time to write everything else for the next two weeks. i hope you like it, i know do.  
thank you from the bottom of my heart to everyone that leaves comments on this, this story is really important to me and i'm genuinely moved to hear that (some of) you are liking it!  
until next time!


	10. loving yourself is weird, you should try it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cutting, self-harm and suicide attempt are mentioned here.

Ronan broke three times during his life. It always included a car, in a way.

The first one, obviously, was when he found his dad, sprawled on the concrete, blood and brains spilling, near his BMW. That time Ronan screamed, and cried, and exploded.

The second time, like one could imagine, was when he wrecked the Camaro, physically painless, mentally lethal. That was the time he got drunk and did drugs and actually decided it was a good idea to give Kavinsky all of his firsts and following him home.

The third wasn't as expected, though. It didn't involve the interstate, or the Mitsubishi, or drugs. It was in Henrietta and involved Adam's absurd and charmingly mismatched car. And Adam.

It happened the night Blue came back, without Gansey, strong and amazing and brilliant as Ronan remembered her, a force to be reckoned with. The circumstances made her, also, absolutely terrifying. He expected her to come back furious, ready to scream and blame and give him hundreds of cold stares and colder responses, rightfully so. After all, those were all of the things he'd been fearing since he was seventeen. His former friends rejecting him, angry, irremediably let down. He expected them to be unforgiving.

But he had also expected Adam to be cold, angry, disgusted by every part of him, from the wobbly lines of some regrettable new tattoos to the way smoke clung to his clothes, from the fresh scars to the old wounds, and he had been wrong about him. He had been wrong about Blue too. What a sweet, wonderful defeat.

It had been a nice evening, long and easy hours of catching up, of joking around the bad as they used to, of rediscovering all of them, how they had clicked together after he had left, closing one eye over Gansey's empty seat. It was scary and amazing. Ronan, for a long minute, had wished it could never end.

But it had, because Adam had wanted it to, because he was tired and cold. A normal person would have just rolled with it: Henrietta wasn't going to run away overnight, Noah and Blue weren't either and he still had a couple of days before Gansey came back. But Ronan was used to silent grudges, to things being okay and then not, to fun and laughter and dancing turning into cold gazes and mean smiles without being able to understand what he'd done or how he could fix it. He felt wrong about everything, from Adam's eyes to the curve of his lips to the excessively polite way he had spoken. So he trailed after him in silence, then climbed inside the car and wished he could disappear. He knew it was his fault. Maybe some joke he'd made, maybe an unfortunate comment, maybe he had spent the whole evening too close to him, too pushy and touchy and annoying. Maybe Adam just didn't want him to be there at all.

“Lynch.”

Adam's voice was calm and almost sweet, but it startled him all the same, distracted as he was focusing on whatever idiotic mistake he could have made to ruin the course of the evening. But maybe he hadn't. Maybe Adam was just realizing how better than him everyone else was. Maybe he just couldn't wait to pack his stuff and leave.

He breathed in slowly, then turned around and tried to look normal. Adam’s face was barely visible, his handsome traits just outlined by the reflection of the street lights. He looked like a beautiful and concerned vision, a ghost Ronan wished could haunt him forever.

“Yes?”

He tried to sound calm and just vaguely distracted. He probably didn’t.

“Everything's fine. There's no need for you to freak out." he whispered, trying to make the whole thing feel casual. But it wasn't. Because if Adam had actually felt the need to tell him to be fine, it meant Ronan was so visibly distressed he couldn't ignore it. It meant he was used to seeing Ronan lose his cool and being anxious and while it made him feel safe, it also meant he was dragging him down with him in the black mass of his thoughts and issues. Too close. He wasn't meant to get that close.

He breathed in, then out, then lit a cigarette. Up until then, Adam had never allowed him to smoke in the car, looked displeased whenever he did it inside and raised an eyebrow every time he got out to do it. This time he just let him.

It was a disaster, really. Because Adam told him that everything was fine, and it probably was, and he still found it hard to calm down. He still needed to smoke and turn on the radio and close his eyes, he needed to feel the slight bump in the road and let those calm his nerves, while repeating himself again and again that it was nothing, that Adam making a face or being slightly colder or wanting to go home didn’t mean the world was going to end. He knew he had issues, he knew his mind was a shitshow and the entire universe – himself included – had worked hard to ruin his life as much as it was possible, but he’d never felt actually broken before. He could feel Adam’s eyes going over him, again and again, his hand delicately brushing over one arm, him breathing heavy and uneasy.

Maybe he felt guilty. Maybe he was completely pissed off. Maybe he’d just ruined a beautiful day forever by being too damaged to function.

It was embarrassing and humiliating and he wanted to disappear.

But he didn’t. Instead, he stayed in the car and Adam drove and drove and drove, for longer than it took to reach the Barns or St. Agnes or anything at all, to be honest. It took Ronan a while to realize they were going around with no direction. That Adam, beautiful and thoughtful and frankly too much for a human wreckage site like he was, was just driving to calm him down, to let him find comfort in the silence of the Virginia roads, in the murmuring of the car and the distant noise of the radio and the odd, comforting sensation nothing could reach him there. Ronan had always been fascinated by cars, it had never occurred to him that he might also see them as a hideout. But it made sense, it always made sense if Adam had a part in it. He was the closest thing he had to any kind of compass.

He didn’t open his eyes, not even when the car stopped, he just let himself slide slowly until he could rest his head on Adam’s shoulder. Ronan felt delicate fingers brush through his hair and knew, no matter how far from the Barns they were, that was the only home he was ever going to have. It couldn’t get better than that, he couldn’t ask more than exactly that, Adam understanding without asking and everything falling back into place and his body going still again. He was the solution to everything that had ever happened and the prevention from every future mistake. He was god and light and everything he ever wanted.

“Are you okay?”

It was kind of funny he was asking, after reassuring him everything was fine earlier, but he knew what he meant. So he nodded, slowly opening his eyes to witness the anonymous and comforting blackness of the woods.

He didn’t know why he found the sight so soothing, but it was. Somewhere it even made sense, but he didn’t try to understand it then. He just took everything in.

“Yeah. I’m- yeah.” he whispered, forcing himself to sit straight again, even though Adam’s shoulder felt like the only comfortable thing that ever existed. It was fine. He was going to be fine.

“Sometimes it just happens.” he added, to try and reassure him.

Adam didn’t look reassured, be he saw his elegant profile nod, barely lit by the faint reflection of the headlights. Then he turned towards him, his head slightly leaning to the side, his eyelid lowered over beautiful, breathtaking, tired eyes, his lips slowly parted and dangerous inviting. There he was, Adam Parrish, solution to every problem. King of sleepless nights and dark under eyes and paper-thin skin, resourceful expert in managing life and pain and Ronan. The boy that carried his bike over the hill and almost beat him in Latin and charmed him out of his mind by just existing.

“It shouldn’t happen, you know.”

The thing was, Adam wanted Ronan to be well more than Ronan himself. It was weird and new and made his heart beat faster.

He wished it could be that easy. That he could just tell himself that it wasn’t right or healthy or normal and then everything would just fall into place. That some things weren’t just too broken to be fixed. That he wasn’t one of them.

“I know."

he whispered, heavy and tired.

Adam furrowed his brows and tried to say something, then gave up entirely and shook his head, matching his restlessness and the curve of his mouth and his soul.

Ronan let a hand brush over his cheek, light and dangerously sweet. He wanted to drown helplessly in every part of him. He wanted to kiss him until his soul slipped away, from his mouth and into his chest, stored soundly behind bruised ribs and a gentle heart.

Adam’s eyes were different. Firm, terrified, absolutely wanting. Ronan didn’t know if anyone had ever looked at him that way. He just knew that he was, right in that moment, and it felt right. It felt like anything was finally slipping into its rightful spot, for the first time, after years and years of every piece of his existence roaming aimlessly through the universe. It was warm and beautiful and easy.

He leaned forward, closing his eyes to hide from what was happening, from guilt, from the fear always creeping in the corner. Adam leaned forward too, letting him feel the soft warmth of his breathing over his lips. Then pulled back. Every piece was thrown out of his place and scattered on the floor.

“Ronan.”

Adam had never said his name like that, sad and beautiful and tired. It sounded like a prayer, the desperate kind, the one you whispered to yourself in the dead of the night while the world looked big and terrifying and you had nowhere else to go.

Ronan, right now, didn’t know whether he was supposed to be god or the world.

He didn't want to look, but he did. There was so much pain in his eyes that he could taste it on his tongue. It was his fault. He knew it was.

“We can’t do this. _I_ can’t do this.”

He was doing everything he could not leak through the edges and it hurt. Ronan wasn't supposed to be the one to do something like that to him.

He felt his heart sink deep inside him, far from every spot it was supposed to be in. He wanted everything to stop, to go back to before they almost kiss and before that night and before he came to Henrietta. It was wrong, it was all wrong.

“You’re right, I’m sorry, I-” he didn’t stutter, but his voice was shaky, desperate, every word struggled to form into his brain and again to leave his mouth.

His heartbeat was all over the place, his throat tight, his blood cold. He didn't know what to do.

Adam turned towards the windshield again, breathing slowly. He ran his hands through his face, again and again, then shook his head.

“I can’t do this to myself. This is not right." he whispered, slow and cold, like he was warning himself more than Ronan.

Because he was. Because he wanted it too but knew what was good for him.

Ronan nodded. He was right. Adam didn’t deserve to be wrecked by him too.

“I understand. You don’t have to say anything.”

His voice came out low, a struggling whisper, painful and hard and necessary. He pretended like it wasn't. Adam was right to step back, he was not going to keep him close by pouring guilt over his already fragile frame.

He was selfish and rotten and a complete asshole but not to him, not now. Life had already been way too mean to Adam.

But Adam shook his head again, firm and resilient, no matter how shaken he was. Ronan felt so in love with him he wanted to disappear.

"No, I have to, because you don't understand." he said, slowly, placing the words in front of him one at a time, like he was reading his life on beautiful tarot cards. Because he wanted him to understand, he wanted him to heal, he wanted everything to be right.

Ronan had never deserved any of it.

“It’s not about you. It’s not that I don’t want you, because I do.” it was a whisper, this time, low and warm and _almost something_.

Then he turned slightly in his direction, like he was expecting him to complete the sentence. Of course, of course he wanted to.

“It’s Kavinsky.” he whispered back.

He felt nauseous. His whole body tensed, nervous, a ridiculous mess of aching parts. He hadn’t even thought about Kavinsky that entire time, but he was always there, looming somewhere in the corner of his mind, bothering with texts and phone calls and terror jammed right in his body again and again until he just couldn’t do anything.

That was waiting for him, back home. He knew he could just say he'd break up, as any sane person would. Except that the mere thought of doing it shut his whole body down. Adam nodded. He knew.

For the first time since he had started planning that trip, Ronan realized he was running away again. That there was no way for him to heal just by shoving everything behind his back, that his problems weren't going to resolve themselves by avoiding them and putting miles between them. Whatever led him to wreck the Camaro followed him all the way to New York and whatever led him to get his body ruined in New York still sat on his shoulder and viciously pecked at his heart.

He would never be free. He saw it clearly, now, flesh and blood, he had dug himself into a hole too deep to climb out of it.

Adam looked at him again, tired in a different way, the one that made you angry and ready to run, to tun over tables and bad habits and things that you used to blame. He wasn't a god, he had been wrong. He was a saint, flawed and resilient, ready to fight and scream and bite for what he believed in.

“I know you need this, but you have to understand. I can’t put myself into a situation like this. I’m trying, for once in my life, to care for myself.”

There was a note, in his voice, something desperate that belonged to sadness, to pain, to years of hiding under cars and friends and lies. Adam wanted to be fine, he wanted it with every ounce of his being, so bad it hurt to look at him, to remember bruises on his face and sleepless nights and blood pouring out of his ear.

How blind he had been. How insensitive and rotten and undeserving.

He took both of his hands in his own and held them tight, their shape so familiar and lovely he could make it out in his dreams, years after seeing them, every vein and rough spot and pattern of bone etched into his mind. Now, his gentle touch was part of the picture. He bowed low enough to kiss them, then let his face linger, without letting go.

“You’re right. I’m sorry.”

He whispered, knowing what it meant, knowing he had to leave once again, to let him the space to breath, to heal, to climb out of his hole and build something beautiful, something meaningful, something he deserved.

It felt like dying, like ripping every organ and muscle and bone, one after the other, out of his body and into the gutter. That was the only light he had, and he had to leave it there.

Adam had been his home. Now he had was left wondering once again. His soul slipped out and everything went numb, but he didn't cry, or scream, or said anything.

The third time, Ronan broke in silence.

\---

He didn't really know how he had gotten to that point. If he tried to look back at what he had done, at the versions of himself he had been throughout the years, it was impossible to pinpoint exactly what had led to that specific, underwhelming one. There wasn't one big thing that had his ruin as a direct consequence. But there were lots of things, big and small, more or less relevant, painful, difficult to shake.

There was his father dead on the ground and his father alive before, spending more time traveling than he did home, lying constantly and slipping through his fingers but still too lovely to let go of. His mother falling and crushing her head and falling asleep forever and his mother awake, too kind, impossibly forgiving and probably crushed by the weight of loneliness and secrets and doubt.

There was the ghost of Gansey in the wrecked Pig and Gansey his friend from before, forced to trick him into being decent and not barking at strangers and not beating the shit out of Declan regularly, his best friend and brother and guardian that pretended he wasn't damaged and drove him to the hospital the night that letting life leak through his arms had felt like a good idea.

There was Adam, distant and untouchable because of what he'd done, and Adam before, close and comforting and unable to understand. There was Adam killing him with smiles and jokes and stares, borrowing his phone to call Blue and breaking his heart again and again by being alive and wonderful and absolutely not his.

There was Kavinsky blowing up his phone in Henrietta and playing with his head in New York and Kavinsky before, handsome and tempting and dangerous, behind the wheel and on the other side of the road and smiling mischievously at him while racing, back when he was nothing more than a shiver down his back, a weird dream, a flashy idea, unable to hurt him.

There was everything he had ever done to himself, every race or beer or scream into the void, every time he had tried to lose himself in the southern roads, every time he had been mean and unpleasant and venomous for the sake of it, to put barbed wire around himself, to punish the world for having the audacity to exist and treat him that way.

What had happened to Ronan Lynch was life, raw and heavyhanded like it sometimes did, too fast and too early to let him prepare, crushing easily soft bones shielded by fragile skin.

What Ronan did was rolling with it, letting his body flop into the flow and do every stupid thing, make every stupid choice, follow light after light ignoring the sun, pray to every god and volunteer for every crazy quest, hoping it would lead somewhere, hoping to find peace or meaning or anything at all in the process.

What he left behind were broken hearts and broken cars and art that came from pain and dark places and burning things.

What he had found were different kinds of love, by misunderstood brothers and determined friends and crushes that weren't really crushes because, god, he loved Adam way too much to describe him as anything less than an absolute object of worship. And another one, twisted and broken and defective but easier to deserve, so he settled for that.

He settled for cleaning glasses and bottles off the table and counters and windows and everywhere at all because sobriety, sometimes, was more dangerous than intoxication. He settled for throwing up at the side of the road because he was way too drunk and Kavinsky unable to drive in a straight line, for whispering a prayer under his breath when it was 3 a.m. and the man he chose to love thought it was a good idea to try new shit parked in a dark neighborhood. He settled for drunken sex and high sex and too-unconscious-to-be-aware sex, for scratches and skin bruising and mean words, for feeling dirty and tired and uncomfortable all the time, even when he didn't, even when he forgot.

Ronan didn't know if that had been the final drop. He knew that one day he woke up in his bed and everything hurt in a different way, that something burned on his skin and the sheets clung in a weird way to his naked body. That when he sat up it stung and when he looked down blood stained the white fabric. When he dragged the sheets away, he saw deep, red and messy cuts low near his hipbone, shaped in the form of a K. And he didn't scream or got mad or said anything at all, because he remembered getting it, drunk out of his mind, he remembered Kavinsky laughing while carving his skin and the realization it was okay, really, that it didn't matter, that nothing mattered anymore anyway.

He just got up, every part of his soul impossibly numb, trying not t think, not to focus on the process of mourning whatever was left of his sanity. He dragged himself through the kitchen and K was sitting at the table, rolling a joint and looking empty. He sat down beside him and rested his head on the table, watching him, thinking about the sting in his hip and the might of the whole disaster that had taken over his life.

“Am I too fucked up?” he whispered, squinting to look at him while also trying to avoid sunlight.

He didn’t even know why he had asked, even if Kavinsky actually cared about a question like that one, he surely didn’t have anything to say about it. Nothing that wasn’t stupid or mean or both. But maybe he was still too tired not to be raw, because Ronan felt his fingers on his back, then on the sides of his neck, gentle, almost comforting.

Or maybe he wasn't.

"No shit. You always were, you fucking idiot."

\---

Ronan had spent the night wide awake. He kind of tried to sleep, in the beginning, laying on the couch and pretending like everything was fine, like Adam wasn't going to leave the next day and he wasn't already used to how wonderful and easy it was to fall asleep beside him. Of course, he never thought it was going to work and got up to smoke after something short of an hour.

It wasn't just what had happened with Adam, how heavy it weighed on his chest and how close he felt to breaking, constantly, every time his lighter struggled and his steps were noisier and anything at all went even remotely wrong. He was meant to see his mother again, the next day. He had to make specific accommodations with Declan, too used to be anxious and fear for their life to have the process of seeing Aurora anything less than absolutely nightmarish, a dance of fake names and reservations and tipping nurses to let the room available for visit, just for an hour, just for him and one other person _as long as it’s not the fucking cokehead_. So, it could not be postponed.

And Ronan, after having given up entirely on his dream of salvation and happiness and love, had to drive by himself to the hospital in the old BMW he hadn’t seen in three years and was now standing alone in the holloway, just outside the door, because it would have been insensitive and fucking insane to ask Adam to be there with him. For him.

He hadn’t seen his mother since he was forced to move out of the Barns with his brothers, when she was still fine and awake and sad. He didn’t witness her falling, he wasn’t there when she was brought to the hospital and he’d never been allowed to visit. He had been angry about it, then, before everything stopped having sense or meaning or relevance. He didn’t even know what had been wrong with her, just that the surgeons and doctor and nurses had done everything in their power to restore her health, that there had been surgery and he was supposed to wake up two to three days after it, but never did.

That was as far as his knowledge went, everything else had been emptiness and longing. Now, looking at the nurse opening the door, he realized any normal human being would have done _something_ to know more, to come earlier, that it was absolutely insane to just shove the pain on top of the others, but what was he supposed to do? He’d been fifteen, then. A child, too tired to think and understand and grieve.

He wasn’t that different, now, at twenty-two.

"Physically, she's in perfect health. There is nothing wrong with her and her mental functions should be alright too. But she just doesn't respond positively to our attempts to wake her up." she explained, calm and almost sweet, as she led him inside the room. She smiled at him as she would have to a five-year-old, which made Ronan wonder how much his brother paid the clinic or how much of a messed up orphan he had to look in that woman’s eyes.

It was a dumb, mean thought, to distract himself from how fast and hard his heart was beating inside his chest, how tight his body felt, how strong and terrifying was the desire to see her again. He had never actually thought of what it would be like, to see his mother like that. Maybe, somewhere deep inside of him, he even thought it would have not been a big deal. But he had been wrong.

There were many things he wasn’t prepared to see when he laid his eyes to the sleeping body of Aurora Lynch, the first being that, while having the same face and hair and build of her mother, it didn’t look like her. It was something about how limp and lifeless she looked, abandoned on the bed, tubes inside her mouth and nose and body, oppressive and uncomfortable in a way that made his hands itch. He wanted to rip everything out, to turn off the machines and kick away bags and trails and everything towering over the sweet creature that used to pick him up when he was way too big for her to carry and kiss him goodnight at the ripe old age of fifteen.

Then, there was the enraging, unsufferable urge to see her wake up. Ronan had known the state she was in, he knew that at the point the possibilities were scarce, yet he couldn't help himself from wanting to shake her, scream at her, do anything in his power to see any reaction from her at all. Maybe he was hoping in some sort of miracle. Five minutes into silently watching her, he realized there wasn't going to be one.

He slowly got close to the bed, holding his breath, his throat tightening and his chest heavier as he approached, until his leg hit the mattress, a few centimeters short from her hand, and he felt ready to cry. That was another thing he wasn’t prepared for. How fucking hard he would have missed her, the way he remembered her, huge sweet eyes watching him, lips smiling, hands constantly busy cooking and picking up toys and stroking his hair or Matthew’s back or Declan’s cheek. Her voice, her princess laugh, the sweet and almost pained way she had of scolding them, the soft kisses she constantly needed to plant all over his face every time she managed to trap him in her arms. He missed every minute, every detail, every beautiful moment he hadn’t appreciated enough.

And she was there, now, his mother in the flesh, with the mole on her neck and three light freckles on her left cheek and an old burd on the side of her wrist, breathing, ready to hug him and stroke his hair and tell him everything was going to be okay. And she just couldn’t.

Ronan didn’t even try avoiding the process of crumbling completely. He just sat down, laid his head in her lap, and let himself cry and mourn and feel angry and completely alone.

“What the fuck, mom.” was all he managed to whisper, tightening one hand over the silhouette of her leg he could make out from over the covers, his voice shaking and pathetic from the crying, but who cared, at that point. Everything was already ridiculous anyway.

He felt a hand brushing over his hair and cried harder, his eyes closed shut, his hands clinging to the sheets. Who cared if the nurse saw, if anyone at all saw, for the matter, he was exhausted. He was hurting. He wanted to disappear.

Ronan didn’t know how much time he spent like that. Probably a lot. As it turned out, the entire hour.

“Lynch, you’re time’s up. What do you say, we step outside and grab a bite?”

His heart skipped several beats when he heard that voice, sweet and low, with the unmistakable accent made stronger by weeks of being home and alone and almost okay. Adam wasn't supposed to be there.

Sure, he'd given the info to let him in, before what happened, but he wasn't expecting him.

That was kind of the whole point, that he was alone, that he couldn't be his crutch. Yet he had been, for most of the time he'd spent in that room, stroking his hair in and silently watching over him. Ronan had assumed that the nurse had just been overstepping. Instead, it was Adam, saving him again.

He took his time to look up at him, finding it hard to detach himself from his mother and harder to wipe his face with the sleeve of his hoodie, gathering the strength to meet his eyes. It got easier when he saw how calm and understanding he looked. _Home._

He offered him a hand to get up and Ronan held on to it as he looked at his mother again, as he stroked her hair and kissed her cheek, taking in every detail of her, reminding himself it was, still, just a faint image of what his mother really was. That, together with Adam beside him, was how he found the courage to leave her, to turn his back to the room and walk quietly out of the hospital and towards the parking lot.

Ronan saw BMW and Adam's car parked one beside the other and remembered that he was leaving for New York, that day. That he probably was never going to see Adam again. He let go of his hand, thinking it was better off this way, that he was still tricking himself into thinking it was real.

"Thank you."

Looking at him in the eyes while saying it was the least he could do after he had surprised him again, when he needed him the most, so he did.

Adam shook his head.

"This is nothing." he whispered, then bit his lower lip.

Ronan could almost hear the rest of the sentence that could have been _this is nothing compared to what you did for me_.

But it would have been too much, he agreed.

And he was also wrong.

"You know, you don't have to do it alone." he added, becoming calmer and more reassured as he kept talking "I'm sorry about yesterday."

Well, that made no fucking sense.

"Adam, you were right."

He really had been. Ronan was leaning on him, dragging him down with him, letting them fall into something that almost felt like love and healing and peace. All while still being unable to break things off with Kavinsky.

But Adam shook his head again.

"I know I was, but that's not the point. I wasn't clear enough." he explained, measured, determined to fix everything, to make things better.

Once again, striving for light, for good.

"I was upset and it came out wrong. It just hurts, seeing you like this. You're so much more than this and you're stuck, depending on someone that doesn't deserve you or treat you right.

It's frustrating and I can't just watch while you destroy yourself."

Somehow, it hurt more to hear it from him.

Ronan knew things weren't good, he had known for a long time but seeing it through Adam was a whole other thing. He stood there, brows furrowed, lips tight, pain spilling from his eyes with every word he spoke.

He knew he was hurting himself. He didn't know he could hurt him too.

"But I will be here for you regardless. I will support you and remind you what's best and tell you the truth.

And if you want to make it right, I will help. I will do whatever you need, everything I can, to make it easier. Because I want to be okay, and I want _you_ to be okay.

I'm tired of thinking I'm not entitled to happiness."

Ronan was too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm sorry if all of this feels rambly and rushed and weird. sometimes i put words out there and just don't know how or where to stop. i'm also sorry it took this long, but life and uni and insecurities akways have their way with me.  
i sincerely hope adam doesn't sound mean, because he's not, not to me and not at all, the process of putting your wellbeing first sometimes requires you to be firm and strong and rational when everything else tells you the opposite.  
we're getting close to the end of this thing and i'm so happy that some of you are liking it, reading comments always makes me so happy and emotional that i can't really put it into words, i'm so grateful for all the support this insecure bitch is getting.  
i hope you liked this one too, sad and weird and heavy as it is. see you soon!


	11. this may be the day you actually forgive yourself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> while there isn't absolutely nothing graphic or even barely described, there is mention of self-harm/attempting suicide in here. so please, if you're sensitive to that, be careful while reading.

Being Ronan Lynch was kind of weird. Because he had been raised by a scammer, was currently dating a mobster’s son _and_ drug dealer, had tired - more or less willingly - almost every drug going around and had spent the better part of his teenage years street racing, often drunk at the wheel, yet the thing he feared the most in the entire universe was the wrath of a charming southern boy who barely reached six foot oh height. One that, also, wasn’t prone to violence or rage or just being mean in general.

It sounded stupid, because it actually was, and Ronan was painfully aware of it. Because he knew Gansey, better then Gansey knew himself, from the mint of his breath to the tight and unsurmountable knot of his anxiety. He knew about that one time Hellen had almost killed him by trying to make him fly in a cardboard plane, that the dimple on his left cheek was slightly deeper than the one on the right, that he struggled and lost sleep and wrecked his own sanity in the process of attempting to save boys that didn’t need or want or thought they deserved to be saved. He knew every face and smile and look and what it meant, what it hid, how bad the cogs in his mind were working.

He had the kind of knowledge only strong deeprooted love brought with it, the one that had you memorize every nook and small gesture until it was etched inside your mind, sweet to remember, ready to hurt. That knowledge included the fact that Gansey probably _wasn’t _absolutely furious, that he most likely _hadn’t_ spent the last few years preparing a speech just to tell him how much of a disgusting piece of shit he was and definitely _didn’t _plan on calling the police and having him arrested for literally every crime ever as soon as he could lay his eyes on him.

But the process of being Ronan Lynch, also involved constantly ditching reality and common sense for the sweet sweet chance of absolutely ruining his life and just gloriously condemning himself to live in the state of complete and paralyzing fear and remorse. Not the most cheerful one, to be honest, but it was way too late to change anything, at that point.

Or that was how he had put it, after the first time he had recognized Gansey after what could be considered their split, inside the Camaro, just a couple of feet from him and the Mitsubishi while they waited for a stoplight to turn green. Gansey hadn’t even noticed, lost in god knew what kind of worry or quest or hidden thought, but Ronan had. Ronan always noticed, as only the ones used to stand in the back did. He’d recognized the straight silhouette of his nose, the posture, the elegant shade of his tan, everything about him so familiar and fascinating it struck him before he even saw the flashy exteriors of the car.

That was the first time, since they had become friends, that he really looked at him from the outside, that he saw him as everyone else saw him, beautiful and perfect and charming and distant. Something he could reach out for but never touch, never keep close, never crawl under for protection. If he was to call him, he realized, Gansey wouldn’t have smiled. He wouldn’t have given him a sweet and friendly look or paternal scolding or a playful response. He had realized, for the first time, that _this is something I’ve lost forever._

He couldn’t breathe. He reached for Kavinsky’s pocked and pulled out the first thing he managed to grab, dry swallowed and whispered to _just run, for fuck’s sake._

He couldn’t run, now, although a part of him really wanted to. He couldn’t run because he was actually going to D.C., for the sole purpose of meeting him, to sort things out after years of hiding and not sleeping and missing every part of what he used to have. He couldn’t run because he’d been running for too long and it didn’t work, because he could avoid seeing Gansey and looking him straight in the eyes but he still felt his presence, the weight of his actions, the gaping hole inside his chest where his best friend used to be. Because when you do something you shouldn’t you want to be caught, you want to get what you deserve, you want to lower your head and feel the force of what you did crush your spine and then leave you alone forever. Because he wanted to feel clean again, he wanted to be right, to deserve love and kindness and salvation. Because he had been so bad for so long, tucking himself under his sins like a comforting blanket, resting on the easy path of just being a lost cause and ignoring the blood pouring out oh his lips and poisoning everything.

He was tired of things being easy in every wrong way. He wanted it to be hard, to push every limit, he wanted fate and life to slap him in the face as he climbed his way back to salvation and deserve every part of it, loving the way it made his muscle sore and his bone ache because reaching the top, then, would have been the sweetest victory and the easiest night of sleep. He wanted to amend, whether he could be forgiven or not, because guilt weighted more then pain and pain was easier to carry if he looked at it straight instead of carrying it around like the corpse of the good lives he’d killed in the process of destroying himself.

Sure, he was so nervous that anxiety was probably the only thing keeping his limbs together and working, yet it felt good, somehow. Like meeting Adam for coffe, like going to the Barns again, like sleeping soundly for the first time since his father died. Coming home, in a different way, picking up the pieces of himself he had scattered around places and people he loved, letting them slip back into themself and pouring gold into the cracks. He wanted to be whole again. He wanted to like the process of wearing his own skin and carrying his own heart inside his chest.

And he wasn’t alone, as he had been since he wasn’t even eighteen, he wasn’t alone because he had Adam riding in the passenger seat, like he had been a thousand years ago, complaining about his driving and his choice in music and how cranky and fidgety he was. Because he was driving the BMW once again, because no one was dragging him anywhere for once.

And while it wasn’t enough to calm him down, it felt right.

“Christ, Lynch, we’re barely halfway there and you smoked half a pack already.” he complained, and that also felt right, because Adam wasn’t treating him like something easily breakable.

Once again, Ronan liked it a lot.

“Shut up, I smoked the first two before we left.” he pointed out, shaking the pack with one hand to catch a cigarette between his lips.

“And the other _seven _during the ride.” Adam added, looking amusingly displeased.

“Well, I’m nervous.” he tied to defend himself, furrowing his brows, pretending it was a proper excuse in a way that probably belonged to a spoiled child. Which he had been.

“We’ve been on the road for _an hour._”

“_We’ve been on the road for an hour._” he repeated mockingly, making his voice ridiculously high pitched, something that Adam’s voice wasn’t. It was perfect and velvety, the warm morning sun on pale cold skin and honey going down a sore throat and everything beautiful that ever existed condensed in a sound. But Ronan was good at pretending Adam didn’t knock him out of his mind by just being there and talking and looking at him.

He was good at pretending he wasn’t the entire reason why he could still mock and talk and wasn’t completely paralyzed by fear, biting at his nails and lips and fingers and everything.

Adam raised his hands, finally giving up, then flopped back into his seat. Ronan let out a victorious snort from his nose and finally lit up the cigarette.

It felt good, it really did, because while his stomach was concentrated into a tight knot and everything about him felt like a light and shapeless dream, he was doing it. Setting things straight, putting himself together again.

Things started to get real as they got closer, his heart beating faster, everything feeling heavier, shinier, more real and ready to eat him alive. He kept thinking about Gansey, looking down at the wrecked Camaro, unable to breathe, filled with pain and rage and regret for every moment they had been friends. He hadn’t been there when it all happened, but he could make the image out in his mind, crisp and painful and real, filling his dreams and laying rocks in his chest. It wasn’t always the same. Sometimes it was more dramatic, with Gansey screaming and kicking and looking at him with pure rage in his eyes. Those usually happened when he was intoxicated. Sometimes he just looked cold, and tired, and out of love and affection and everything, and told him to disappear from his sight. Sometimes that he would never forgive him. Sometimes nothing at all.

Probably, they were all wrong. Because they were all born out of fear, out of guilt, of hatred for himself, without mercy, without love.

But still, he couldn't shake the thought that, maybe, some of them were possible. That maybe the worst ones were, and Gansey at that point probably hated him, if he hadn’t forgotten about him entirely. No, that was not true. That was his mind playing tricks on him, because Gansey never forgot.

\---

The main problem with being sixteen was, well, being sixteen. And that meant that the world felt ten times larger than it actually was, while also weighting entirely on shoulders that weren't big and firm enough to carry it yet. It meant being small, sometimes skinny, with limbs that felt too long for your body and a back that ached from growing and a skin that was kind of weird and everything looking impossibly hard to live with. It meant feeling alone, often, feeling it more when surrounded by a lot of people or when a teacher gave off a slightly disgusted look or a best friend which doubled as a brother and guiding light found new and better friends and laughed at their jokes or something inside your chest just burned looking at that one person, the one that absolutely shouldn't be looked at.

Ronan felt all of it, all the time, all at once. He was at war, constantly, with the way he looked and how he felt and how much of a fuckup destined for nothing he was. He felt alone and helpless and unlovable, because maybe he was, because he had lost his parents and his home and almost every kind of safety, and he had a bad temper and a filthy mouth and everything about him was wrong, barbed wire, made to hurt ad mock and bleed. Because he could pretend like he was worthy of his friends, of living in Monmouth, of being loved and protected and helped out by good people, but he probably wasn’t.

Because Ronan was the inconvenient friend, the one to watch out for, the one that made everyone roll their eyes and take a deep breath and consider not hanging out with them at all. Because Ronan was mean and dark and angry, unable to be sweet, a whole idiot, only useful to chase strangers away. He was _the dog_. He was _the asshole_. He was fucking tired of everything.

And sometimes it was too much to process by himself, too much to live through and accept, to be awake. And so he drank, in his room, in his car, in the church’s parking lot. He drank until he went numb and nothing was hard or difficult or painful to carry. He drank until he couldn’t feel his face and his legs and common sense. Usually, it was just enough for him to sleep, or cry it out until he felt somewhat less dead, because he was young and helpless and just wanted to be okay, after all.

But sometimes drinking wasn’t enough. And sometimes everything else was just too much.

Those were nights for disasters, when he drove drunk and picked up fights and Declan or Gansey had to pick him up at the police station, bruised and tired and numb. When everything felt too far for him to reach, too clean for him to touch, too good for him to deserve. Sometimes, they were smaller and he just got a mean look before waking up as nothing had ever happened. Sometimes they were bigger and his criminal record got longer and Gansey barely spoke for days and Declan screamed at him that he was _a fucking idiot_ and that he was _so goddamn tired of having to deal with your fucking shit_ and _if you really want to kill yourself just fucking do it but stop dragging me into this._

But one time it was just worse than any other time and he ruined his arms and his brothers ad his friends. One time he took that advice in a sense that was way too literal and then Declan was never himself again.

He didn’t really want to kill himself. It didn’t start like that. He was just tired, and alone, and numb. Gansey was out with the rowing team for the night and Ronan was alone in his room, staring at the ceiling.

Sometimes, he felt like a puppet. Sometimes his room and his car and his desk at school and the passenger seat of the Camaro felt like boxes he was left in, stashed on the bottom, destined to exist solely when Gansey reached down a hand to pull him out and play and remind him that, maybe, he was alive, maybe he did matter, maybe it made a fucking difference whether he was actually there or not.

That night the box was shut close and he felt just dead and unreachable, impossibly numb, stranded away in a far corner of the universe. And he was drunk, and tired, and his day had been a nightmare and he didn’t feel part of anything anymore.

The first time wasn’t meant to hurt, he was just checking. Whether he was still alive, whether he still bled, whether he was still able to feel pain or anything at all. And he was, he did, he could. And it almost felt good, satisfying, like giving himself what he deserved, making amends for making Declan worry and Matthew sad and Gansey drag around his lifeless corpse even though it was heavy and rude and uncomfortable to look at. For being alive at all, ugly and unpleasant as he was, for poisoning the lives of everyone around him and taking up space and breathing when he had left the better part of himself behind.

So he did it again, and again, and again, because he needed it. Because it felt wrong and it hurt and both were things he was accustomed to. Because when he laid back on the floor and felt his own blood soaking his clothes and arms and the tiles, he was at peace, to the point of falling asleep just like that. Because he didn’t really know the difference between falling asleep and passing out and feeling calm and having life slowly slipping out of your body. Because he didn’t know Noah would have come into his room to ask him to binge some show on Netflix together only to scream and call an ambulance and Gansey and everyone and be ruined forever. Because he hadn’t imagined all of them in a hospital room, surrounding him like some kind of renaissance painting, with Matthew sleeping with his head brushing against his leg and Gansey holding his hand and everyone looking so empty, so impossibly tired and in pain, that maybe it would have been better, for all of them, if he hadn’t woken up at all.

They were all there, with pale faces and blue under eyes, desperate, scared. They all knew some kind of pain, bigger or smaller, far off or too close to be named, in faint distant scars or dark, horrible bruises. Now they all shared that particular, horrifying one.

Gansey carefully leaned over him, mouth opening and closing, without being able to find any kind of appropriate thing to say. Ronan raised a bandaged arm in his general direction in a silent request to wait.

He didn’t know where to look. Right in front of him stood Declan, arms crossed, leaning against the wall. He wasn’t used to his brother looking actually concerned, without any anger mixed in, just pure fright and pain and loneliness. Now, eyes closed, mouth pressed in a thin line, with an old t-shirt and sweats, he looked off. Like the morning Ronan was screaming over his father’s corpse and he had stood in front of the door, pale, his hands shaking as he shouted at his mother not to come. Hurting. Small. He realized he wasn’t used to his brother looking like a teenager either. He felt his guts twisting inside of him into a tight knot.

Adam was sitting across the room, nervously torturing his hands, looking more restless and used up than all of them because he was, because he had school and work and a home that was not a home but hell on earth. Worried about sneaking back inside without anyone waking up and realizing he had left, about having classes and tests and shifts without having gotten enough sleep, about Ronan trying to let his soul leak out of his body. That was the boy he desperately wanted and he was ruining him. His throat tightened too.

And then, beside his teenage-crush-probable-first-love, was Noah. Noah with his skin costellated in pale scars where his face had been destroyed by an old friend, with his hearth broken and his soul damaged and everything about him so fragile, so easy to break. Ronan had shattered everything, that night, he could read it in his pale eyes half-opened into the void, in the way his head laid abandoned against the wall, in the horrifying way blood stained light-colored clothes and delicate shaky hands, something that you could wash but never forget, that never allowed you to feel clean ever again.

He didn’t know what to say. Nothing would have been able to justify that kind of pain, nothing was enough. He flopped back over the bed and felt the strong, desperate need to disappear again. Light fingers brushed over the back of his hand and he shut his eyes closed, as tight as he could, because he wasn’t in the position to cry. He wasn’t allowed. It wouldn’t have been right.

“Go home. You don’t have to be here.” he whispered, turning on his side, facing away from Gansey and wrapping himself around Matthew’s head “It’s late. I’m fine.”

He didn’t know what to say and there was nothing he could do, which meant he just had to give up and punish himself inside his mind. It sounded like a good plan.

Of course, it couldn’t be that easy. It would have been impossible for Gansey to just leave him there.

“No. I can’t, I won’t leave you here by yourself.” his voice was so serious and determined Ronan felt the need to apologize. But he didn’t.

“Declan and Matthew will probably stay.”

“Declan and Matthew _have to _stay. You’re on suicide watch.” was the low and distraught murmur that came from the other side of the room

_Suicide watch._

Ronan had to remind himself to breathe.

“See? Everything’s fucking fine.”

He sounded angry. Hysterical. Barbed wire. To chase everyone away, to be left alone, like he wanted to be, like he deserved. His voice was raspy and creaked, but maybe, if he was mean enough, nobody would have noticed.

It didn’t work, not on Gansey. He gently held his hand again. Ronan yanked it back.

“Just fucking take them home. All of them. Matthew too.”

He just wanted everything to stop. Everyone to go home and forget about him and everything. The whole absurd wreck oh him just to disappear completely.

In reality, he probably just sounded like an ungrateful asshole, but he was at peace with that.

What mattered were slow steps on the floor tiles, Gansey’s voice murmuring as he carefully made up a way to make him sound less harsh and angry, Declan murmuring something else, Matthew’s familiar weight leaving the mattress and a delicate kiss on his forehead and cheek. He wasn’t left alone in the room, Declan was still towering over him somewhere, but it didn’t matter. He was okay with crying in front of him, he probably already knew everything anyway. He was also thankful for the fact that he didn’t try to talk.

He didn’t grasp that it wasn’t a choice, it wasn’t his brother punishing him or believing he needed to be alone and in silence, but Declan being completely unable to process his own feelings, to put them into words. He didn’t realize his brother was waiting for Gansey to come back.

“Ronan.”

It didn’t startle him. He knew he was going to come back, somewhere, deep inside him, he was even waiting for him.

Gansey didn’t ask if he was asleep, he knew he wasn’t. They were each the other’s companion in restlessness, he couldn’t possibly believe he would have been able to rest.

He didn’t answer or turn around to face him, but slowly opened his eyes.

“You don’t have to tell me why you did it.” he began, composed in a way that could only be the result of rehearsing the words, again and again, alone in his car on the way from Monmouth. Because he wanted to say the right thing. Because he was trying, putting his own feelings in his pocket, doing his best.

Ronan rubbed his face with one hand, chasing away the tears, forcing himself to stay put together.

“And, please, know that you can tell me about everything and can count on me, whatever happens.”

Gansey’s voice cracked, almost unnoticeably, and Ronan bit his cheek so hard it bled.

He realized that something inside of him would have never been the same again. That now he would have been afraid every time Ronan didn’t pick up his phone or didn’t open the door of his room or wasn’t in the same building as him. That he was going to feel guilty and responsible forever, that all of them were, and _that was completely his fault_.

“And that I love you, and no one is angry at you.”

The creeks were noticeable, now, so much that he could just feel how tight his throat had to be, so much that it hurt him too. When Ronan finally looked at him, he was seated on the side of the bed, perfectly still, composed like a statue. His eyes were red. He felt so ashamed and guilty he could taste it on his tongue.

Ronan realized that he did, actually, helplessly love him. That Declan did too, and also did Matthew and Noah and maybe even Adam. That he could have lost them, and the luxury to admire them, and the chance to drive his father’s BMW and ridicule his latin professor and do all the things he loved, all the things he still could do, all the small good moments he could still afford. He felt scared and sad and angry, all at the same time, each of them too strong to leave him with the ability to breathe. He didn’t say anything, but covered his face with one arm, white bandages skipping his elbows but hiding everything else. He already felt a slight pull, where the skin had to be stitched back into place. A childish and pretentious part of him wanted the sewing to go all the way to his heart.

He didn’t say he was sorry. He just held his hand tight.

“Just… please, promise me you won’t do that again.”

Ronan nodded and kept his promise. Because Ronan never lied. Because he wanted something better for himself. Because he never wanted to break anyone’s heart ever again.

Yet he did.

\---

If he thought about it rationally, Ronan knew he had no reason to be scared. That, even if the worst scenario was to came true, things couldn’t actually get worse than they already were.

He had already betrayed Gansey’s trust, already decided to set fire to their friendship by wrecking the Camaro and then running away without giving himself the chance to try and make amends. He had already lost what he had back then, already spent years running and hiding and getting worse and feeling alone. What could ever happened, now, that hadn’t already?

The worst realistic scenario he could make up in his mind, included Gansey being furious and screaming and telling him to get lost. Which was something that had been plaguing his dreams for years, nothing new. Basically, the worst thing that could possibly happen, was Ronan finding out that he had been right all along. And, yeah, maybe he wasn't ready even for that, maybe seeing Gansey's hatred would have hit him hard enough to knock him back two steps on his journey to any kind of sanity, but hiding from him again meant already knowing he was going to fail. Ronan was too raw, too straightforward, too easy to be crushed under the weight of feelings and thoughts and unresolved deals. He didn't bend but broke, again and again, every time things went south. All he could do was putting the pieces together and hope his bones didn't heal to be horribly crooked, holding himself tight enough not to need actual care.

He wouldn’t have been able to move on and survive like that. And he had decided to live, to grow, to be okay.

And moving on and being okay required him to park right there, in the driveway of the charmingly yuppie Gansey house, to step out of his car and wait for him to show up.

He had, somehow, already found the strength to text him to set up a meeting like that, outside, because Ronan sure as hell wasn’t ready to come him and maybe accidentally meet one of his parents, or his sister, or anyone at all. Of course, he had immediately given his phone to Adam after that, sure that any kind of notification would have given him a heart attack - which was not the best, while behind the wheel - but that was still something.

Having spent two whole minutes standing outside the car without lighting a cigarette was also a step forward, but that was mostly Adam telling him it was a stupid idea as soon as he’d seen him reach for his pocket or him fearing Gansey would have been even more disgusted by the sight of him smoking. The scarring bruises and stupid hands tattoos already made him feel exactly like everything his former best friend would have wanted to avoid.

He was looking down at his boots, fidgeting with the sleeves of his hoodie again and again to avoid succumbing to the excruciating need to hold Adam’s hand, when tailored tan pants and horrible leather shoes intruded his field of vision. _Holy fucking shit_.

His first impulse would have been to draw in an enormous breath, but that meant giving off how scared shitless he was. So he just stopped breathing instead. As he slowly raised his head, Ronan genuinely thought he was going to pass out. He didn't. Instead, he met Gansey's deep, brown eyes. For a whole moment, he was so happy he could cry.

That was his best friend, the one that had offered him a hand when he was sprawled on his bathroom floor, that had given him a home, the faintest, most needed hope when everything looked dark and desperate and temporary. His body knew him, was used to his square frame and the line of his mouth and the way he tilted his chin. And so he warned him, for a moment, to stop, to take it in, to hold that exact second in which nothing had happened yet and he could just pretend everything was going to be okay.

Then it stopped, he remembered he wasn’t allowed happiness anymore.

Gansey looked different, in the way Adam had looked different, in the way everyone looked different, on the way from weird teenager to man. Although, Gansey had never looked like a weird teenager at all, which wasn’t really fair.

He hadn't gotten taller, but had slightly grown in size, with sturdier shoulders and square hands, his skin, for the first time since he'd known him, lacking the usual perfect tan. He wanted to joke about it, and about his dark under eyes, and his defined jaw and the faintest shade of what, if grown, would have probably been a decent amount of facial hair. Every detail of Gansey reminded Ronan of how much he had missed him.

The nervous hint in his eyes, though, that reminded him of himself. He hadn’t realized how much he needed to be forgiven, until that moment.

“Ronan.” he said, like his name was an incredible historical event, like it came as a surprise.

He had missed hearing his voice too.

He didn’t know how to react to that, so he just nodded, nervously.

“It’s been a while.” was the only group of words his mind managed to jam together, not much, sure as hell not enough.

  
Gansey furrowed his eyebrows. He didn’t look upset or bothered, just mildly displeased. Like he was trying to solve an unexpectedly hard math problem.

“Well, that’s one way to put it, I suppose.” he whispered, looking away, trying to gather his thoughts, before his eyes stopped over Adam. “Good god, I’m so sorry. Hi, Adam, I’m so glad to see you.”

His expression had changed, just like it used to, into the one charming, friendly Gansey wore. Adam raised one eyebrow, yet he didn’t complain. He mumbled something about saying hi to his parents disappeared, which was expected, but he still didn’t like.

Ronan didn’t want to be alone. Sure, he had to be, but he was still stubborn enough to oppose some kind of common sense, at least in his private whishes.

So, now, it was Ronan and Gansey, alone, again.

The good thing was, Gansey actually didn’t look as outlandishly angry as he had imagined. The bad thing was that he did look uncomfortable, which wasn’t really a good sign.

"You know," he began, looking away from him again, a sad, distant smile carefully brushing over his lips "the most absurd part, out all of this, is the fact that you actually picked up your phone to text me. Last time I checked, you didn't even answer emergency calls."

His words walked a weird line. On one hand, he was beginning on a mild, almost cheerful note. On the other, he still looked distressed, his lips pressing into a thin line every time he wasn't speaking. He had to collect his thoughts, again and again, to pick the better options.

Ronan was completely unable to do that. He was too busy sweating, and telling his heart to slow down, and struggling to remember to breathe. He was feeling everything at all, happiness and sadness and longing and fear. He wanted to stay with him forever and run away in that exact moment, to be forgiven and left alone, to bury him deep into his memory and forget he ever existed. So he just said the first thing that came to mind, looking him straight in the eyes, because he had to. Because he was a fucking adult and had to be strong.

“You can’t afford to be picky when you’re this fucking wrong.” he whispered, absolutely still, even though everything about him was on fire.

He had to be. The situation was so tense he didn't know what to do, or think, or feel.

Gansey was unreadable. Ronan didn’t understand what everything meant.

But he nodded, now, before looking at him, so maybe it wasn’t _that_ bad of an answer.

“I suppose your right.”

“I suppose I am.”

That had just slipped off his tongue. He didn’t mean to be bitchy and sarcastic with him. Ronan was in the wrong, he should have just lowered his head and told him he was sorry.

Gansey didn't look bad, though, just suddenly, impossibly sad.

“I’ve missed you. Even the shittiest parts.”

It almost knocked his soul out of his body. That was so much to unpack.

Gansey saying he had missed him, admitting he had been thinking about him, absolutely defeated. Gansey cursing in a way that didn’t feel as wrong as it used to, because it probably wasn’t that uncommon anymore. Because he probably had changed too, in small and complicated ways, and Ronan strived to know and learn and absorb them.

He also wanted to say he had missed him too, so much his whole body hurt, so much he’d felt lost from the moment he had last seen the Camaro until just now.

But instead, he said

“I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry. It was a mistake, and I was an idiot, and I ruined anything. I won’t ask for forgiveness, I don’t even know if I’ll ever forgive myself.”

It came out altogether, one word after the other like they had been tied together by strings.

He had kept those words inside of him for so long, he could have never imagined how hard and wonderful it would have been to say them out loud, how light his body would have felt just right after. His knees felt weak.

He was free, whatever happened after that, he had finally done the right thing.

Gansey froze for seconds that lasted ages, perfectly still, his face a wonderful and delicate portray of shock. It took a couple more for him to elaborate, blink a few times, fix his wireframes over his straight nose. He just looked hurt, now.

Then, he said the last thing Ronan would have imagined him saying.

“Ronan. It was just a car.”

He sounded so careful, so painfully confused.

Ronan just wanted to let his body fall to the ground and cry his whole soul out.

He had been seventeen, and alone in the world, and in need of love and light and any place to rest. He had been desperate and lost and guilty, too scared to do anything that wasn't running and hiding and hoping to disappear. He wanted to hold that smaller, fragile version of himself to his chest and cradle it to sleep. He had been so vile with his own soul, merciless with the skin his mother had carefully put him into the world wearing. And he had been wrong.

He couldn’t speak. His throat felt too tight, he wasn’t prepared to make a mess of himself.

“Sure, I have been angry, because I trusted you and you went behind my back. But I think I’ve spent more time being angry at myself, by now.”

“What the fuck would you be angry about?”

He didn’t actively try to sound that aggressive. He was just used to jump to Gansey’s defense, even when the one attacking was Gansey himself. Which, right now, looked more confused than everything else.

He looked at Ronan like he was trying to read right through him, but that was Adam’s specialty. Still, he found whatever he was looking for, before he sighed, positively defeated.

“You really haven’t changed much, haven’t you?” he murmured. This time, he just sounded sweet.

"Only for the worse." he answered, proudly lifting his chin.

Gansey chuckled and it was beautiful, like nothing Ronan had experienced before the last two months. He gestured at him to follow him and they sat on the steps to the front door, close enough they almost touched.

They stayed silent for a while, Gansey gathering his thought, Ronan finally lighting up a cigarette.

"I have… not been a good friend to you." he began. He was absolutely ready to call bullshit, but Gansey politely raised a hand, so he decided to wait.

"I'm not saying that I was the worst, or that you don't have your fair share of blame, but I've made a lot of mistakes. Because I tried to change you, to mold you in what I thought could be a better version of yourself, without asking myself why you refused to do that on your own. Without asking _you_ why. Without understanding that you really didn't need to."

Ronan took a drag from his cigarette and looked down at his boots for a moment. Having that conversation was weird. He was so used to thinking he was wrong, that he had ruined everything, he couldn’t really believe Gansey was actually telling him that it wasn’t just that.

He couldn’t even understand whether he was right or not, it was just so fucking wild.

“So?”

“So, after what happened to the Pig, I got mad. And I spent a few weeks just like that, because I didn’t know what to do, and I didn’t understand any part of what _you_ had done. And then I started asking myself why, specifically, were you running away, and realized that you were scared. That you were scared of me, of how I would have reacted, and that was insane, because I was your friend and you shouldn’t be afraid of your friends.

But you were right. Because I was too busy trying to be your support and fix your issues, while still benefitting off the way they made you act around me, to actually behave like a friend. Or a good one, at least.”

That was way too much to unpack. Ronan looked up at the sky, then down at his boots, trying to elaborate. To understand what it all meant.

He just knew his chest felt tight too, now. That he had guilted himself about the wreck he had been to the point of loathing his reflection and now a small, but important fraction of that weight had been lifted off his shoulders.

Gansey, somehow, understood. So he just reached for his hand and held it tight.

“What I’m trying to say, is that I forgive you for wrecking my car and never telling me about it and running away with the worst person I’ve known in my entire life.

And also, that I love you and I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you when you needed the most.”

Ronan felt a big, impossibly heavy piece of himself sliding back into place.

It was coming home, after years of wandering into the coldest and darkest depths of the universe, and finding everything better than he remembered. It was sleeping after a long day of work, so impossibly sweet, so desperately craved.

He closed his eyes and felt relief washing his sins away.

Adam, like on cue, carefully stepped out of the door and sat on the other side of him, with lights steps he would have recognized everywhere, placing a hand over his knee, giving him back all the strength he had lost in the process of putting himself together.

Sure, it wasn’t over, he still had the biggest beast to defeat.

But it was different, now, less terrifying.

Because he wasn't alone. Because he had decided to save himself. Because he deserved to be okay.

"I have missed you too."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> writing this chapter has been a rollercoaster. i hated some parts and loved some others but the thing is, i can't write gansey for shit. so, if anything about this feels off, i know it already and, yes, i'm also mentally punishing myself for having had the audacity to be born.  
i know this was extremely anticipated, and it probably wasn't nearly as good as any of you wanted it to be, and i'm sorry. this whole month has been a mess and my mood keeps shifting but i love writing and i need it and it helps me so i really wanted to write and put out this one now.  
i will take more care and time with the next couple of ones, i just hope i didn't disappoint you too much.  
i'm so grateful for all of your comments, you have no idea of how much they warm my heart every time, and i absolutely have to thank elliptical for having commented basically the whole thing in such a sweet and thoughtful way that it made my entire week. thank you for reading this, so so much.


	12. living get easier once you realize you're actually allowed to want good things.

Ronan drove back to New York in his father's BMW. It wasn't the fastest way to go, let alone the least exhausting, but he needed the time. He needed hours and hours by himself, enjoying the road, not riding shotgun or because no one else was conscious enough to drive but because he wanted to, because he loved driving and speeding and watching the road unravel in front of him, being aware and in control and ready. He also needed to think, long and hard, about what he was going to do and say, to put his thoughts in line, one after the other, and make up a plan because he needed to. Because he literally had no idea of what he was doing, what he was going to do or _ needed _ to do. 

So, step one: figuring that out. Back in D.C., less than a couple of hours ago, he had told Adam he was leaving _ to make things right _. Only now, miles and miles in, he realized that he had no fucking clue of what that was supposed to mean. He knew he had to fix the situation with Kavinsky, that it was horrible and unhealthy and part of the reason why his life had gone completely off the rails - being Ronan Lynch still made up most of the problem, but that would have been way more complicated to make right - and that he absolutely didn't know where to begin.

How was he even supposed to go at it? He knew, at that point, that he was way too fucked up to be with Adam, so maybe they didn’t really have to break up, maybe he could just stay and give him an ultimatum help him get his shit together, without having to go through the absolutely nightmarish experience of _ actually breaking up with him. _ Except that he wanted to. Things weren't working out for them and Ronan was too smart not to realize he had been emotionally cheating on K from the exact moment he had stepped in Adam's car or to forget that he had almost kissed him and that the only reason why he didn't was the fact that Adam was way too righteous and smart to succumb to nothingness and self-destruction the same way he did. He knew that the fact that Adam didn't want him didn't mean _ he _ didn’t want Adam and wanting Adam automatically meant that staying with Kavinsky was settling. 

Truth was, that Ronan was an asshole but not a liar, and he couldn't go back to K and pretend like he was content with him, that he wasn't the consolation prize he had been holding on to since he thought he had lost Gansey years ago. That he wasn't a teenager anymore and his feelings for Adam were too strong and painful to hide them against the sharp silhouette of Kavinsky's collarbone. That he had loved him so much that he had forgotten how to exist any other way, but that hadn't been enough in a long time.

Which meant he had to break up with him and was an absolute idiot and a horrible person just for considering the hypothesis of staying. But, honestly, who could have blamed him? Being alone was hard and Kavinsky had been his safe place, up to that point. He had kept him on his side, guiding him through life and darkness and loneliness and being away. Ronan had clung to his side as a lost boy of seventeen and had been holding on to him ever since, letting his judgment be Ronan's judgment and his friends be Ronan's friends and his feelings be Ronan's water and food and air. He had laid his head on his shoulder during long car rides and his lap during bad drug trips and some of it had been nice, some of it had been sweet and fun and easy to love. And more than that and everything, it had been all that Ronan had had when he felt desperate and alone in the universe.

And leaving felt impossibly hard, after remembering that, so he lit up a cigarette and turned the volume of the radio up, high enough to feel his bones shaking, which was always a welcomed and absolutely wonderful sensation.

So, what was he going to do? He was going to come back to New York, in the morning, probably late because he didn’t want to wait for Kavinsky to wake up. He was going to look at him and be composed and make everything right because he deserved it, because deep down even K deserved it, and all he wanted for the both of them was light and good things and closure. He was going to tell him that what they had wasn’t healthy, that he had to stop, and that they were going to remain friends, that he could help him quit drugs and find a job or a way or any kind of meaning, that they both could have something bigger and better and brighter. 

It sounded possible like that, talking to himself in Niall Lynch's old BMW, it sounded real because Ronan wanted it to be, because he was dark and complicated and filled with bad stuff but he had spent the last month charging himself with light. Because he had mended things with Adam and Blue and Noah and Gansey and he wasn't going to run away from anything anymore, even when it got dark and hard and ugly. 

And maybe it was just the usual hype that starting a new plan brought to him, the rush of things going good for the first time in his life, but he wanted to believe in it. He wanted to make things right, to be fine, to feel light and happy and not alone.

So he drove more than halfway like that, barely smoking, stopping at a drive-through to grab something for dinner and making up a way to fix everything himself, the way he made up schemes to try and get his father to stay when he was a child. Of course, those never worked, but he didn’t think about that when Adam called, at 11 p.m., making his heart stop in the only good way possible.

“Checking on me already, Parrish?” he asked, lips curled in a smile that was so wide and sincere it must have been perceivable by sound alone.

“I had to make sure you hadn’t crashed your car on the interstate.” 

Ronan breathed in, pretending that the warm Virginia silk of his voice didn’t wrap him up like his favorite blanket, that he didn’t curse every mile setting them apart. 

He couldn’t do it with him, it wouldn’t have been fair. It wouldn’t have been real. But Adam said he was going to be there for him and he was, calling from Henrietta, probably sitting under that one tree behind Foxs Way, looking sweet and thoughtful and too charming for him to handle. Fuck, he was _ not _ making this easier for himself.

“I did. I also died. Currently calling from the afterlife, the food is great but the connection is shit.” 

“Well, you _ do _ sound braindead, now that I think about it.”

“What a fucking asshole.”

Adam chuckled and it was the best sound he could hear, right at that moment, alone with his car and the dark road.

He heard a muffled voice coming from somewhere in the room, something that sounded too similar to Gansey's smooth and fancy baritone to be anything else. Ronan was reminded that now he lived a life where it was possible for him to hear his best friend's voice in the background of a late-night phone call and felt a kind of happiness so deep and warm he could have drowned happily in it.

“Is daddy there too?” he had to ask, knowing damn well that particular choice of words would be enough to make anyone’s skin crawl.

“You know what, I was actually going to tell you that I’m staying at Monmouth, but you don’t deserve being acknowledged.” Adam hissed, but he sounded way too amused to be successful at making him feel guilty.

“Interesting. You sleeping in my bed?” he joked, without missing a beat, and _ holy fuck how the hell had he even considered not breaking up with K when he literally couldn't stop flirting with Adam was he really a trashcan in human clothes? _

“You know, I actually could,” he said in a whisper, vaguely dubious, taking a moment, maybe to think, maybe to check if Gansey was listening, “now that your room is not sacred ground anymore.”

He sounded sweet and cautious, like he was smiling some kind of childishly excited smile, and Ronan was happy that he could do it now and sad for all the time he probably hadn't been able to do it in the past. It wasn't his right, he thought, to forget all the pain he had caused in the process of tearing himself apart. It was his duty to imagine his room, empty and naked, drawers left on the ground and closet flung open like the nastiest thief had been ravaging through them, posters and drawings and pictures ripped away from the walls like someone had tried to erase his existence altogether. To picture Gansey and the others walking through its empty skeletal remains, to recognize the spot where his own blood still stained the space between the tiles.

Those were things that had to stay with him, that he could not allow himself to forget. Covering up the damage he had done had been Gansey's greatest mistake as a friend, and he knew it now. He also didn't know what to say, with thoughts that heavy weighting over his shoulders.

“Have you had something to eat?”

Ronan, honest to God, didn't remember the last time something had actually said something like that to him. He wasn't even sure it had happened at all.

“Yes, sir.” he sneered back, weirdly happy again, just like that, because his mind traveled constantly fast enough to surpass any speed limit and it was a good thing, now. He needed energy and good things.

“Do you plan to stop someplace to sleep or are you going to make the whole trip in one go like a madman?”

Ronan did not lie, so he just said

“Yes.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake Ronan.”

  


He wasn't actually sure whether he was going to make the trip in one night or not. It still didn't feel real, in a way, no matter how much he thought about what he was going to do once he'd reach New York. He knew he was going to break things off with Kavinsky, yet somehow it didn't feel real. It was like a dream, something distant, that might as well have happened years after that. It felt easy, manageable. 

It got harder as he got closer, because then he started to think. Really think. He had been living with Kavinsky for more than three years, now, all of his stuff was at his apartment, his friends were their friends, his places where their places. He owed him everything, it all carried his mark, all of Ronan was his claimed possession. It would have been difficult to start over, even with support, it meant wrecking his routine and Ronan was a creature of habit.

And that still was the easy part. He had to break up with him, first, and that was going to be a mess. Because Kavinsy wasn't someone you could just talk to, he wouldn't sit down and listen as Ronan explained to him why he couldn't possibly stay. He didn't even want to imagine what he could have done, to be honest.

So he let the wonderful noise of the engine and the ugly and intoxicating electronic tones of late-night radio cover his anxiety, as he collected speeding tickets all the way back home.

Which was a weird way to put it, because that had never been his home, or safe place, or anything at all.

  
  


\---

  
  


The thing about Kavinsky was that he did, actually, truly, love him. That in whatever form his love came it was there, undeniable, hanging over his head, sliding under doors, spilling from his lips over his tongue to be kept in his well forever. He loved him, maybe he had loved him all along, back before they started hanging out, while they were still racing, Ronan spitting out insults and Kavinsky homophobic jokes.

But he knew, at one point. Because Prokopenko had been riding shotgun in the Mitsubishi for months, to the point of looking like a carefully styled prop, but then Ronan came along and became the only one allowed. Because when Ronan told him _ no _ the answer was _ c’mon _ and when anyone else did it it was _ shut the fuck up _. Because he had this way of holding his wrist with his right hand and stroking his arm and glancing at him, from time to time, quick and sly and excited like he couldn’t believe he was actually there. 

Because one night they were all high out of their minds at Kavinsky's house and Jiang, sprawled over the couch at his right, had leaned close enough he could feel his breath on his skin to whisper something directly to his ear. Ronan, usually, didn't like interacting with any of Kavinsky's dogs. Sure, they hung out together because they had to, because, in a way, he was one of them now - though K liked to point out that Ronan was his _ bitch _, more than a dog, which was gross and humiliating but still somehow set him apart from the others - and frankly a couple of them weren’t even half as annoying as the one he was actually dating was, but he still didn’t like them. Because all of them were assholes and idiots and desperate enough to befriend Kavinsky, which meant they were basically like Ronan and everyone knew Ronan was his least favorite person in the entire world. But that time he was high too, and Jiang was probably the only person in the whole pack even remotely close to being sane, so he stayed still and listened instead of punching him in the face.

“How does it feel” he began, voice low and slurry after hours of drinking and smoking and everything possible, “to know you’re the only one worth chasing after?”

Truth was, it felt really fucking amazing.

Ronan had never been anyone’s first choice. Sure, he had been Gansey’s best friend, for a while, but just because he was the first person Gansey had met in Henrietta. As soon as they met Adam things changed, having to share his spot with more and more people until there was nothing special about it anymore. 

With Kavinsky, it was even more than that. Ronan was the only one who could talk back to him, the only one who could touch him, the only opinion he almost took into consideration. He was used to being the one in the back, the _ inconvenient _ friend, the one others had to apologize for. Now he was the one apologizing.

Gansey used to scold him and hold him back from fights and give him displeased looks. Kavisnky pointed his switchblade towards his own friends if Ronan got too annoyed with one of them. 

That, particularly, wasn’t something he wanted or even liked, things like that sparked one-way fights every time, but it still meant _ something _. That he wanted him, that he mattered, that there was something, somewhere inside him, that made him special. Something worth protecting and defending and caring for. 

Or, at least, that was what the fucked up seventeen trainwreck version of him thought back when he still didn't understand the difference between protecting something and wanting it all for yourself. That was what he desperately wanted to believe when he still felt like the darkest, most unwantable, disgraceful thing.

It wasn’t just that. There were other things, prettier, warmer things.

There was Kavinsky keeping a hand on his lower back as they walked, ever so gently, like it reassured him having him near, like the warmth of his skin made living feel easier. There was Kavinsky asking for kisses in his car and in the kitchen and everywhere, looking at him in a different way, almost lovely, almost sweet.

There was Kavinsky laughing and leaving small bites on his skin and burying his face in his neck, breathing his scent in and then breathing out, slowly, like it was smoke or weed or any other intoxicating thing.

"Fuck, man, you just smell so fucking good." he whispered, and Ronan felt loved and special and something more than a lost boy stranded in a forgotten part of the universe.

Kavinsky loved him, in his own way, which sometimes meant that he offered him drugs and never asked for anything, sometimes holding him close and giving up a smile that almost felt real, sometimes tattooing _ MINE _ in crooked lines over Ronan’s right thigh. Kavinsky loved him and sometimes it meant having to shout at him because his jealousy was too much and nonsensical to handle, apologizing when he went too far, even when he was right, because that was something ruthless and desperate in the way he started shouting mocking abuse at himself, too hurtful for Ronan not to feel guilty, because the fear of being left was just too fucking huge to leave space for rational thinking. Kavinsky loved him and sometimes it meant bruises, it meant losing even acquaintances because he didn’t trust them or like them, it meant being _ wanted _ more than he could handle and occasionally giving up and popping pills or doing coke because _ it’s just more fun when I do it with you, just this time, you won’t regret it _. Kavinsky loved him and that meant pain and fear and choking, because eventually, he loved him too, and that ruined him.

Kavinsky loved him and it wasn’t enough, not for him, not like that.

  
  


\---

  
  


Ronan got to New York at 2 a.m., which was horrible because he was _ there _, but also great, because Kavinsky wasn't home, so he could pack the rest of his things and put them in the car without having to go through the awkward process of post-breakup ravaging. It also meant that, by the time he was done and K still wasn't back, Ronan couldn't help getting worried about him, even if it probably wasn't his problem anymore. To be honest, at that point he wasn't even sure he had been his problem to begin with, yet the feeling was there, weighing over his chest, filling his mind with thoughts and fears and horrible scenarios because that was what he did when Kavinsky wasn't there, those were his nights when he was alone in their apartment, usually to rest and relax, usually without being able to actually do either. It was muscle memory.

So, instead of sleeping in the car and waiting it out without having to spend more time with him than necessary, he spent an amount of money that would have made Adam skin’s crawl - he had smiled, just for one moment, thinking about that - to park the car, had a smoke and left to make Kavinsky’s usual round, which was also Ronan’s usual round, because in that ugly godforsaken city nothing belonged just to him. 

It didn't even take long to find him, surrounded by the usual pack, the new dogs he had found on the road and the old ones loyal enough to follow him all the way from Virginia. He just had to do the math, check the time, go to the corresponding club and there was Yosif Kavinsky, dealing just outside the bathroom, Prokopenko leaning menacingly against the wall behind him, everyone else scattered around, ready to act the moment they were needed. It felt so familiar that a part of his soul find it comforting, before disgust started to crawl under his skin, poisoning what used to be routine, exposing it for the depressing spectacle it actually was. K was the best and worst of them all, hands loosely stored in the pockets of Adidas sweatpants, heavy gold chain over an impossibly on-the-nose Gucci t-shirt, ugly sunglasses barely hanging on the tip of his nose, cocaine-blown eyes exposed, looking for the right prey to catch, for the right soul to buy for way less than it was worth.

Sometimes, Ronan thought Kavinsky was the devil, tempting and vicious and powerful. Other times, he thought he was an old-testament god, almighty and terrifying and owner of everything and everyone. Right at that moment, though, he just looked human, a common asshole with too much money and not enough morals, mean and sad and underwhelming. He wondered how had he even thought a man like that could save him, why had he even tried to find meaning at the bottom of a black hole. Then K looked up at him, sucking him up in the dark pit of his eyes, and he remembered. The love and the skin and the wasting away together, far far away, disappearing in the dark side by side. But it was different, now. It just felt like a trap.

“Look who’s here. Missed me too much, princess?” 

The music was loud, but he didn’t raise his voice. He just knew everyone would listen to him, even if it meant having to lean impossibly close, enough to smell alcohol and expensive perfume and some kind of death.

He didn’t say anything. Kavinsky was mad, to the point it leaked even through the thick curtains of intoxication, but Ronan wasn’t going to do anything to calm him down, this time. He felt his fingers between his hair before he could see his hand move, twisting hard at the back of his head with the intention to hurt, expression uncomfortably calm, eyes fiery and hungry. 

“You finally decided to give me something to pull, huh? ‘t was about time.”

Ronan didn’t flinch. Kavinsky mistook his indifference for compliance and smiled.

“Good boy. I knew you’d be back.”

He felt something in his stomach twist, a low, revolting murmur that wasn’t really about his words, his eyes or the way he jokingly slapped him on the cheek before pulling back. It was about the fact that he used to like it, the mocking and the casual violence and everything at all as long as it meant he was being acknowledged. 

“Don’t fucking call me that.” he whispered between his teeth, too grossed out by the way it kept crawling over his skin to let go.

Once again, K mistook it for the usual banter, for Ronan just clinging to his pride or decency or one of the other things he liked to crush. So he just laughed and raised both hands.

"Shit, man, relax." he was calm, now, too calm, because he knew it made Ronan’s blood boil. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a plastic bag filled with pills. Ronan watched as he fished one out with his fingers, carefully, almost lovingly, before putting it in the center of his palm. "Here, take one and chill. It's on the house."

He always said that, like it was supposed to be funny. Usually, he would have just taken the pill if he had wanted to or given it back if he didn't, finding the whole process annoying, but not special.

Now he felt sick. He let it fall to the ground, then crushed it under his boot.

Kavinsky laughed. He underestimated his rage, he always did. He liked to provoke him just to see him snap, to enjoy the way he shouted and pushed and gritted his teeth. But that was fine. He could give him that last night of glorious mocking as a parting gift.

He offered him more pills, throughout the night, Ronan crushed all of them just like that, looking at him, getting angrier and angrier as time went by, as he tried to kiss him or grab for his ass or throat or consciousness. At one point, he passed him a drink, so clearly spiked Ronan couldn't even put it down without the impending fear that someone else could be fucked over by drinking it. So he took it to the bathroom and let it spill inside the sink, feeling a weird relief as he unceremoniously dropped the plastic cup in the trash. 

Then Kavinsky appeared behind him, leaning over his shoulder and letting an arm slide around his waist, pulling him close enough he could feel his heartbeat against his back, hard and fast and all over the place. His whole body tensed.

"I like this lil' game you're playing, Lynch," he whispered, letting his finger brush over his hip just once, slow and hard enough to tease, "‘s cute you still think you can win."

Ronan stopped breathing. The raspy tone of his voice was already intoxicating enough without adding his scent to the mix. 

He didn't say or do anything, because he was right. Ronan couldn't win, so he wasn't going to play at all. So he looked up at the mirror, focusing on his own reflection. He could barely recognize himself like that, angry and awake under the uneven lights, sharp and full of fire and ready to fight.

He held his own gaze until the other one left, leaving a wet kiss on the dip between his collarbone and his neck that made his skin crawl.

Ronan breathed in, slowly, then leaned over the mirror and reached for the marker permanently stashed in the back pocket of his jeans.

_ “NE NOS INDUCAS IN TENTATIONEM” _ he wrote down, just above his reflection, as a reminder to himself _ “SED LIBERA NOS A MALO” _

_ Bring us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. _

He just had to survive through the night.

Ronan closed his eyes and breathed, he breathed as he went back to the others, as he spilled more and more drinks, as he danced and crushed pills and leaned back to avoid being kissed, he breathed before allowing himself just one beer, before everything went warm and blurry. He breathed after realizing that had been spiked too.

He let the anger slip away between his fingers and floated through the remaining hours, pocketing it all up, saving up all his strength.

The morning after, he woke up fully clothed, on the ground near the bed, like when he was a teenager at St. Agnes sleeping in Adam's room. He had survived. And he was ready to scream.

Kavinsky was already in the kitchen. He watched him, leaning over his coffee, focused on his usual sobriety-demons. Maybe he had already noticed that his stuff wasn’t there anymore. maybe he didn’t. It didn’t really matter.

That used to be the man he loved. That used to be the one he would go to, the one Ronan held tight between his arm in the dead of the night, stroking his hair and kissing his forehead and letting him take everything he wanted, making a feast of his body and heart and soul, just for him. And he just couldn't refrain himself from fucking him over that night too.

Kavinsky had never been kind. He had never been sweet or affectionate or anything more than possessive, barely decent, docile for the sake of luring him back. He had never offered him anything more than destruction, never promised any kind of salvation. And Ronan knew that wasn't good, he knew what love tasted like, how cheap and off-brand that particular one was. Yet somewhere, deep down inside of him, he still wanted to talk to him. To make things right, to wash away that night and the ones that came before, to find meaning and reason and any kind of happiness, to carefully sort out everything that was clouding his mind, soothe every bad memory and piece together every shard, every broken and damaged thing, to fix their brain and their bodies until both of them were fully functioning.

Except he couldn't. Except that was his brain still holding on to the ghost of something that probably had never existed in the first place. Kavinsky smiled one of his dark, mocking smiles, then parted his lips, to whisper some kind of insult, probably hidden behind sweet words, probably almost endearing. Ronan didn't let him.

“I’m done. We’re done. I’m leaving.” 

It was hard until it wasn't. 

His throat was so tight it made speaking painful, his heart so fast inside his chest it made his head dizzy, everything inside of him screamed _ run, for the love of god, just fucking run _, but from the exact moment he let the words come out, he felt free. Because he meant it. Because, no matter what K did, he was walking out. Not running. Not hiding. Walking out, free. 

It was like breathing for the first time in years, difficult and scary and fucking amazing.

Kavinsky just kept staring, empty, almost confused, the shade of a smile still staining his lips. He raised one eyebrow, mean and menacing and bat-shit crazy and sure.

“Oh yeah, you are? Really?” he whispered, calm, almost amused.

Ronan stopped breathing again, overthrown by his own body, by his stomach clenching, his heart beating _ hard _, now, like it struggled to leap away from his chest.

Was he? Was it that easy? Could he really get better and make something good out of himself just like that? Did he even deserve it?

No. He had to stay focused. He breathed out, then in, the out.

_ Please. Resist. Just for a bit. _

“I am.” was all he managed to say. Not great, still better than backtracking, but his voice came out lower and shaky.

It had been easier in theory. In theory, Kavinsky wasn’t supposed to look at him like that, like he had already won, like he was ready to jump on the table and eat him alive. He wasn’t supposed to be mean and vicious and _ so fucking sure he was going to fail _.

He got up, slowly, then lit up a cigarette, like it was no big deal, because he was sure it wasn’t. Ronan felt the impending need to throw up.

"And where are you going, then? Back in Henrietta, so that you and trailer trash can live happily ever after? How fucking romantic. Can't believe you fucked your way back into his heart just like that."

He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t even know whether there was something right to say, to snap back at him, to make him feel smaller, powerless, _ the way he felt _.

But Kavinsky was untouchable. He looked down to him even with almost a couple of inches missing, he wasn’t worried, he wasn’t scared, he just burned everything he touched. Ashes couldn’t fight back. Ashes couldn’t tell him that he was an asshole, a horrible person who thrived on ruining other people, a parasite that had been eating at him for years, feasting on his pain and blood, making sure he stayed broken so he could pick at the remains. 

But Ronan, he thought, wasn’t just a pile of ashes. He was a forest fire, burning coals, a fucking ongoing natural disaster.

“It’s none of your fucking business.” he hissed between his teeth, slowly pulling his anger out of the back of his throat, letting everything come out, together with his pride and some regrets and a moderate amount of self-respect.

Kavinsky stopped smiling, then got closer to him and did it again, but this time it felt wrong. It felt twisted, exaggerate, sanity and composure and pure poison spilling from every edge and he couldn’t fucking believe it. Ronan was terrified, but he pitied him too. For the first time, he looked angry and lost and just some guy wearing a beast’s skin. Human. Perishable.

“You’re right, baby. It’s not my fucking business anymore. You found another idiot to cling to and now you think you’re too good for me, do you?” he hissed, without missing a bit, eyes clear and awake, pupils dilated by sheer hatred.

“No. It’s that-”

“Fuck off, Lynch, you know I’m right, I know you better than you know yourself. You think you’re good, don’t you? You think you can fuck off and get a life, a job, maybe even a fucking family, live your whole gay fantasy and forget me.”

He was spitting more than talking, at this point, still smiling, mocking, barely awake. His eyes, though, were a whole different matter. They looked like they could swallow him whole.

He stepped back, hitting the wall with the back of his head. Kavinsky laughed, then shook his head.

“Fucking look at yourself. You’re pathetic. Do you really think someone could love you? Are you that fucking stupid?”

He got one step closer and he could feel the warmth of his breath on his face, now, his eyes burning into his soul, trying to rub salt on the naked ground. It hurt, everything, looking at him and breathing and being alive. He just wanted it to stop.

“I know you. And you can grow out your hair and stop drinking, you can act all nice and clean, but you’re not. You’re sick and twisted. You deserve everything you got yourself into.”

  


Ronan stared at him in silence, long enough to memorize the texture of his skin and the tired curve of his smile and this tiny, charming spot in his right iris that was slightly darker than the rest. 

He realized he didn’t know, whether Kavinsky was right or not. He didn’t know whether he _ was _ sick, and twisted, and made to burn everything to the ground and hurt everyone he touched.

He didn’t know whether he was made for destruction, he didn’t know if he deserved getting better or a good life with a family and love, he didn’t know if he was going to make it to twenty-two. 

What he did know, was that there was no way in the goddamn world anyone could deserve something like that. 

That maybe, probably, Kavinsky did love him, so much that he couldn’t live without him, so much that he wanted to ruin him for the rest of the world. But he still wanted more. He still wanted kindness, and light, and good things, whether he deserved it or not.

So he gritted his teeth, so much that his whole body felt like an entire tense mess, and stepped to the side. Just like that. He went around him and then straight to the door, without a complaint. It was after he opened the door, that he heard it again.

“If I were you, I’d think long and hard about this. You won’t get another chance.”

Ronan stopped but didn’t turn around to face him.

He didn’t have any other choice. Staying meant destruction and he didn’t want it, now. He couldn’t allow it. He had to try and live and put the pieces back together.

“I know.”

He heard the familiar sound of a blade hitting and sliding over the kitchen table, followed by the even more familiar sound of cocaine being sucked in and his own heart breaking.

He didn’t want to look at him. He didn’t want to know what he looked like. He wasn’t strong enough to witness him destroying himself.

“You’re gonna regret it. In two weeks or three months or five years, when everyone will realize how much of a fuckup you are, you’ll be alone, and you’ll regret this.”

“Maybe. It still won’t be your problem.”

And it was still better than staying.  


He didn’t really have a plan, for what he was going to do after that. Right at that moment, the door closed shut behind him. All of his strength, willpower, and ability to think were focused in the process of keeping his legs straight, his knees able to bend, his feet moving, one at a time, left, then right, then left, enough to get to the elevator. Then on his hand, too shaky to press the button for the ground floor at the first attempt. He missed it three times before deciding that just slamming the back of his hand against it was clearly the better option.

He leaned against the wall and closed his eyes. His attention shifted on breathing in, then out, then in, out, in, out. _ Don’t think. _ Not like he was actually able to think. Fishing his headphones out of his pocket was also a struggle. He dropped them three times, before being able to untangle them. Right one in, then left. The elevator stopped just as he pressed play and then it was the same dance as before. Left foot, right foot, up to the closest market, left, then right, beer was more comforting but vodka was easier to carry around, left, then right, up to the car. Four attempts to light a cigarette, the bottle sat right next to him on the passenger seat, waiting, calling. Later. Unlocking his phone turned out to be an impossible task. Typing was out of the question. In the numb, terrifying fog of the moment, his mind was blank. _ ...two weeks or three months or five years, when everyone will realize how much of a fuckup you are, you’ll be alone… _ maybe. Probably.

Hope was an impossible and mighty god that Ronan wanted to worship. But the first, scariest leap of faith had to be something somewhat safe. Something that wasn’t going to leave him bloody and broken on the concrete. He breathed in, then out, took a drag from his cigarette. In, then out, no matter how hard he thought about it, there was just one name, hidden in the depth of his own soul. He knew. Of course he knew. His thumb was sure as he swiped over the number to call.

He leaned back in his seat and put the phone on speaker. In, then out, he was taking a long time to pick up. Maybe he was busy. _ Maybe he’s given up on you already. _ In, then out, he took the bottle and finally opened it up, drank from it like he’d never seen liquid in his life before. In, then out.

“Ronan?”

“Hey I- I need you to do something for me.”

He hadn’t realized how real it was until then. Talking to someone made it real. His voice was already shaking. Pathetic, humiliating.

“Are you okay? Did something happen? Ronan, I swear if-”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m- I just need-”

It was hard. Talking was hard. Breathing was hard. In, then out, then in, then in, then in. Everything was hard.

“What do you need?”

“I need you to come. Here. Pick me up. I’m in New York.”

He sounded insane, he knew he did. He felt insane. He just didn’t want to be alone. He needed to be safe.

“Ronan, I- Fuck. Give me a couple of hours.”

“Okay, I’ll wait. Just- please, Declan. Please come.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this took longer than it should have and i'm sorry about it. i've been all over the place during the last two weeks, with exams and dealing with being absolutely insane. this was also impossibly hard to write, because i have to dig deep for this shit and it's not always a fun process, especially if you add the crippling anxiety that all of it could turn out like absolute trash.  
in the end, i'm quite proud of it, so i hope you'll like it too.  
sometimes we want to save everyone and everything just because our heart tells us to do so, but we can't. because we have to put ourselves first, even if it feels hard and selfish.  
i suffer of Not Beliving In Myself Ever syndrome, which means i ofter have to be dragged by my hair to push through and keep writing and my best friend is the only one actually able to do it on a daily basis. so i have to thank gigia for everything ever. she also drew [this beautiful fanart](https://shamanda-lie.tumblr.com/post/187951771912/he-leaned-forward-closing-his-eyes-to-hide-from) from a couple of chapters ago and i kept forgetting to put it down here.  
i also have to thank alice, for helping me with grammar because as i got close to the end i get Very Scared of fucking up.  
and, from the bottom of my heart, i have to thank all of you for reading, leaving kudos and commenting. i can't even explain how happy it makes me reading through them every time, expecially during bad times like these. i'm so, so grateful for all of you and i can't believe we're this close to the end.  
until next time(hoping it wont take this fucking long)!


	13. letting people in won't actually kill you, you're just scared of unconditional love and all of that shit.

Kavinsky had been excellent at erasing the rest of the world in a way that felt like a good thing. He was good at treating anything that didn't agree with him as the enemy and make his personal wish to have him alone an exciting war against life and death and fate.

Of all things, nobody in their right mind would have dared to describe K as "clever", knowing how hard substance abuse had hit on an already pretty dull personally, but Ronan knew he could be, about certain things. He had been about him, about slowly but steadily severing him from the people who didn't like their relationship or the fact that they hang out or just him, plainly.

He hadn’t needed to do that with Gansey and Adam and the others, since Ronan had been too scared and had felt too unworthy to go back to them, but he did with anyone else they had come in contact with. So, when Declan, calm but worried, had told him that he didn't like him running around and living and allegedly even dating _"that fucking brain-dead moron"_, Kavinsky had started spending his days casually insulting his brother, climbing on every fight, white lie or slightly unpleasant reaction he had with Declan to poison the sole idea of having anything to do with him.

Ronan already though that Declan was an asshole and a liar. But then he had begun thinking he was more than an asshole, that he had no business deciding for him, that he was annoying and toxic and was just mad he wasn't _the only one getting some_ anymore. The problem was that Ronan was with a guy, not the fact that said guy did and sold drugs. He wasn't worried about eery dynamics that included him completely depending on Kavinsky to the point of living with him and following him everywhere and being complicit of whatever shady business he was involved into, it was the fact that Ronan had decided to be independent and do something for himself.

If only he'd stopped just for one moment to look at the whole thing from the outside, to compare his brother's worries with his own relationship, he maybe would have seen right through everything. It would have been easy to understand it was wrong, that Declan loved him and was just worried by how easily and impulsively Ronan had found himself a new torch to light his way, a new god to follow, one less bothered by the thought of hurting him and more fascinated by the idea of robbing him of everything about him that was soft, of the light from his eyes and the flesh from his bones.

What he had seen, instead, was that his brother was cold and far away. That he didn't trust him or liked him or approved of everything he did. The only thing he had been able to see was the fact that he was gay and alone and Kavinsky was the only small, tethered blanket to keep him warm, that Declan only cared about yanking that feeble sense of safety from him.

After that, everything had been easy. Ronan had danced on his fingertips and bowed of the warm fire of his lighters, he had breathed in the toxic fumes like incense and thanked him by offering his body to take and neck to bruise.

He was used to acts of worship. He had been eager to burn all of his former saints to appease this new, all-forgiving divinity.

But his god had been a fraud and worshipping him by giving him his soul and body had less to do with absolution and love and forgiveness and more with a Jonestown-style mass suicide. So now he was alone, abandoned in the driver’s seat of his car, drunk out of his mind and feeling like the wreck of a teenager he had been. Once again, a small, mindless idiot, scared and tired and alone. Sure, he could have called Adam or Gansey or literally any of his newly-found friends, but what good could that be? Best case scenario, he would have gotten all of them worried just to receive some condescending babbling about how everything was going to be okay. Or how everything was not going to be okay for a while but eventually he was going to grow back into himself and grab life by the throat or some shit like that. No one was going to prepare him for the possibility that things were _not_ going to be okay, that maybe he _was_ just a fuckup and they were all going to leave him by the time they were done with school and bullshit and ready to let their futures come into shape and he would have been still there, getting drunk by himself late at night and not being okay and incapable of doing anything meaningful. This, once again, was the best-case scenario. The worst-case was them all realizing that already, as soon as they picked up the phone and heard his voice all slurry and miserable.

So, what he did as a grown, twenty-one-years-old man, was closing his eyes and think about how long it would have taken for anyone to understand he wasn't worth it. What he did, was thinking about how hard he had let himself be hurt by a guy that probably was doing lines of coke in the shape of "FUCK YOU RONAN LYNCH" and still feeling like, maybe, that really had been his only chance at love and any kind of happiness and feeling whole.

What he did was thinking about how young he had been without even realizing it, how soft and in need of love and easily hurt, how desperate and alone, the way he was now, the way he had hoped he was never going to be ever again.

He hadn’t even realized he had fallen asleep until a knock on the window woke him up, strong and quick, the way of a policeman or a firefighter or someone worried and angry and ready to beat him to death.

The first thing he thought when he opened his eyes, still completely shitfaced after welcoming almost an entire bottle of vodka into his system, was that Declan didn’t look like a god or even a saint. In fact, that was probably the fourth time, since they had stopped living together, that his brother looked incredibly human, well-dressed and hair somewhat brushed but slightly disheveled, with dark eyes and a pale face and something about him that just felt sad. Not cold, not angry, not like the handsome distant statue his _official caretaker_ had turned into after the ground had eaten Niall Lynch up, but like his brother, the one shaking at the door when their father died.

He looked like Declan, just Declan, the boy who stood inside his room at 3 a.m. scaring him shitless because sometimes he just had to check on everyone, the one he pranked and made fun of in a way that wasn’t mean, the one who laughed, only sometimes, only when it was really funny.

It hurt when he looked like that, but this time Ronan didn't feel guilty facing him. Because he knew, regardless of what the future held, that he had done the right thing. So he just unlocked the doors and moved to the passenger seat, waiting for his brother to sit at the staring wheel to do something he had wanted to do since his world had been wrecked for the first time, six years ago, but that he had been too proud and angry to do ever since. He had done it with Adam, even with Kavinsky, on different occasions and with different meanings, because it made him feel safe. Because it made him feel loved. Because he needed it.

But when he laid his head on Declan’s shoulder, for the first first time since his father had died, life stopped weighing over his back.

"Well, this is a surprise."

Declan whispered, weird and confused and slightly nervous, and Ronan thought he was a complete asshole. But also, that both of them were assholes, boys even when dressed in adult clothing and with adult delusions folded inside their pockets. And they both were new to this.

So he just half-laughed, with his lips tight in what was an attempt to give the moment weight and importance but it wasn’t really how that worked, between the both of them. He was too drunk and time had made Declan too hard for it to feel that natural.

And it was okay. It made him comfortable enough to stay there and close his eyes.

“I thought you were in Henrietta. Matthew is worried sick.” he whispered, which was his way of telling him he was supposed to warn him before leaving and calling all of a sudden and completely shitfaced wasn’t exactly the most reassuring thing.

Ronan just shrugged, keeping his eyes closed, shifting to make himself more comfortable over his brother's shoulder. Declan didn't brush his fingers through his hair but didn't push him away either, he just laid his chin on top of Ronan's head and it felt right.

“I came back. Like, last night or something.”  


Declan nodded, gently, pretending he didn't sound tired or weird or sad, because he knew, hell if he knew that was so fucking hard already.

“I thought you were staying there until New Year.”

“Yeah. I’ll go back there. I had- I had some stuff, y’know. To take care of.”

Declan just hummed in response, this time, because there was only one thing to take care of up there and Declan knew, maybe not specifically what brought him to that point, but he had to feel it somehow. The people who loved him always managed to _feel _it.

It was kind of nice. Maybe he could just go over the whole thing without having to say it out loud. Except he couldn't, because that's exactly how he'd gotten that bad in the first place: horrible things happening, Ronan not talking, everything going more and more off the rails until he felt the need to jump out of his own skin. It was the easiest move but not exactly healthy, in the long run. And Ronan, drunk and sad and tired enough to lean over his brother's shoulder while it wasn't even dark outside, still wanted things to be healthy.

Also, drunk Ronan probably was the best chance he had to begin that conversation without freaking out. So he took a breath, bit the inside of his cheek, and decided it was about time.

“I broke things off with K. It sucked by I had too. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to, but then last night he tried to get me high again and he did and I- I couldn’t do it anymore. I didn’t want to do it anymore. I’m tired.” he whispered, slowly, taking his time to pick words that made sense and put them one after the other, because he liked to act and talk like an idiot but right at that moment, he just wanted to do it the right way. He wanted to pretend he could be mature and smart and decent about the whole thing. Even if he felt more sad and miserable the more he talked about it.

He felt Declan tense under him. He didn’t know if it was mad about the drugs, worried about how the whole thing must have gone down or just generally displeased at the idea of Ronan going through that whole deal. But he felt his hand brushing over his arm, just once, so at least he knew he wasn’t mad, which was important. But it did make his throat tighten and his eyes burn, it did make him think that he needed it, he needed to be held without fearing the other person snapping and fingers brushing over his arm without wanting something else in return. He needed to be treated like that, he needed someone to be nice to him.

“You know, it wasn’t even that hard. He was so shocked that I just left before he could do anything about it. I could have done that years ago, I could have done it anytime but--”

"You didn't want to. You didn't want to leave until now. You never do what anyone tells you to do unless it's exactly what you want." Declan completed the phrase for him, nice and easy, and Ronan silently thanked him, because saying that out loud would have been hard and pathetic and absolutely painful.

“Yeah. I just- I just thought I didn’t deserve anything better than that, before. I was okay with it, I thought that was what I deserved, because I’m, y’know, _like this_.

I kinda still do.”   


This time Declan didn’t try to hide how upset he was. He sighed, deeply, and squeezed his arm with one hand, not enough to hurt. It was more _I’m here, I’ve always been here, and you’re an idiot and I love you._ They stayed like that for a while and Ronan liked it, more than he could have ever imagined it.

He knew Declan wanted to say something about it, he just needed more time to decide the right way to say it. So he sat up straight, put his seatbelt on and started the car while Ronan let himself flop back to his seat, leaning his head over the window like an edgy teenager or a tired adult.

  
Matthew was waiting for them down the road, one bag filled with takeout in each hand, and his sight alone made Ronan feel better, like everything was sliding back in its place.

It just felt right, all three of them in the car, Matthew cheerful and slightly worried in the backseat, Declan looking like a darker, yet somewhat better Niall behind the wheel, Ronan looking at him and wondering how could he even blame his brother for being a liar and an asshole and mean while him becoming like that was the only reason why Ronan himself still had a soul, instead of bitterness and hatred and responsibilities.

There were a lot of things still to be said. He thought he was his duty to begin.

“I’m sorry. I’ve been an asshole and made you worry without giving two shits about it. I wasn’t even sure you were gonna show up, when I called. I-” _I don’t deserve this, _that was what he was going to say, but he knew that letting his self-loathing take charge meant guilting them into forgiveness.

Matthew was the first to respond, curly head popping up between the front seats to look at him, his once-small-now-giant hand reaching for his, clean and strong fingers intertwining with his bony, ink-stained ones.

“You don’t have to apologize, Ronan, it’s okay. We’re your family. We love you.”

He was almost alarmed, like the fact that Ronan could _think_ that he needed to do that was an incredibly worrying factor in itself. Like he hadn’t been a complete asshole for _years. _Not crying, for a moment, felt impossibly difficult.

He really, truly, didn’t deserve any of that.

Declan didn’t say anything until he stopped the car. He stayed completely still for one moment, hands over the steering wheel, eyes lost somewhere far off.

“You know, there’s this thing about Christianity that kind of bothers me.” he began, voice deep and calm, every word drenched in meaning because Ronan already knew, it wasn’t about religion at all.

“There’s a lot of outrage about how we constantly sin, how we shouldn’t fuck before marriage or be gay or do a lot of things. We’re told that we’re all born in sin, that we must live our entire life trying to make it up to god and earn his love. It’s a weird concept, if you think about it. It’s almost as if our entire existence is something we have to apologize for.”

His voice got softer, towards the end, as if he was touching something delicate and important. Ronan tried hard to pretend that it wasn’t moving something buried deep inside of his soul, that he hadn’t missed every part of it.

"But it doesn't really make sense. God made us like this, maybe we weren't supposed to mess things up this much, but that's a misstep on his part, more than ours. He's supposed to know that, he sacrificed his son to make things right for us regardless of how bad we end up doing. Sure, we probably turned out to be more complicated than he imagined, but sometimes it's just inevitable. We're destined to be imperfect."

Declan turned to look right at him and he wasn't uncomfortable, he didn't look mad or unsure. He knew what he wanted to say, he knew what Ronan needed to hear and that he would have understood.

Because it was about him, like all of his stories were and all of his father's ones had been before. Because Ronan wasn't good at taking advice and didn't believe any good thing that could be said about him, but he liked stories. Stories stayed with him.

“So, I think he will love us, regardless of what we do. It’s what he’s supposed to do, worrying about whether we deserve his love or not it’s just stupid.

It’s his job, no matter how hard we try to chase him away, he will keep doing it. We can pretend we don’t want it, or need it, but he will love us.

It’s just what he does.”

Ronan didn’t know what to say. He squeezed Matthew’s hand tighter, letting Declan’s eyes, so similar to his own, sink deep inside his soul, without hiding, without running away.

“I didn’t know your god complex had gotten this bad.” he whispered, and Declan looked absolutely done for five whole seconds, before bursting into laughter.

It was going to be fine. Maybe he _was_ going to be okay.

\---

Ronan became acquainted with the concept of trust-falling when he was nine years old and was absolutely obsessed with it. Not because of the whole idea of blind faith or thrusting someone with his own life, but because, as a hyperactive, thrill-loving child still somehow sure he was indestructible, he enjoyed just screaming "trust-fall!" without further notice and throwing himself dead-weight in the arms of whoever was unfortunate enough to just stand there, his eyes closed, absolutely sure he wasn't gonna fall to the ground, because his catechist had told him that the people who loved him were always going to catch him and he was very good at taking things the literal sense. The worst thing was that it always worked, because, of course, no one in their right mind was going to let that scrawny and excessively trusting child just fall to the ground. So Ronan just kept doing it, even after his mother had to grab his hair while cooking and his father almost dislocated his shoulder by yanking him up by one arm and Declan had screamed at him, multiple times, that _this is the last time I swear I’m gonna drop you_.

As expected, absolutely no one liked it except for Ronan, but Matthew was the least pleased out of all of them: he was too small to be able to catch his older brother, so he wasn’t included. For this exact purpose, Ronan made up a new, peculiar kind of trust fall which both answered to his younger brother’s need to be involved and the rest of the family’s wish for him to _please, for the love of god, stop_. It involved a bit of preparation, extreme secrecy and a whole _lot_ of trust.

Since Matthew couldn’t catch him, both of them had to prep a surface for the other one to fall on and since that took out most of the thrill - which was, once again, the most important part of the process - instead of just falling back wherever they were, they made the drop from a window. A ground-floor window, for sure, but a window nonetheless - which was why secrecy was _absolutely _crucial. And since neither of them could be quick enough to set up a good surface during the short while it took for the other one to shout “trust-fall!” and drop, they had to be scheduled, which made the whole deal even more thrilling.

One of them was to whisper it to the other in the morning or late at night, setting up the time and the window, then, when the moment came, he had to let himself drop from the window with his back to the outside and his limbs stiff, so that the trajectory would be predictable. Meanwhile, the other was supposed to set up the landing spot with pillows or blankets or anything at all as long as it was soft enough to stop the other from getting hurt. Ronan did the fall twice to test it and it worked, which was enough for the both of them of turning it into an ongoing thing.

They kept doing it, each time setting up the fall farther away than the previous one, for the next day, the next week, in twenty days, in a month and a half. Each time more dangerous and thrilling, with Ronan so excited to mark it on the calendar and counting down to it like it was Christmas or his birthday or any other important event.

It was nice, having another thing to look forward too, something to count on when his father’s trips kept getting longer and the time he spent at home shorter. It was fine if dad wasn’t getting home that weekend, Matthew was making the fall on tuesday, it would have been easier to hide it, he could use the time to set up something cooler. It always worked, it was always fun and interesting and exciting. They were always going to be there for each other, someone was always going to catch him.

Declan was the only one who knew, even though he never played because he said it was stupid and pointless and that they were both going to get hurt. He never told on them, though, not even when they're mother suspected they were doing something they weren't supposed to, just kept on minding his business and acting all boring and serious.

Ronan wasn’t affected by his comments at all, smiling mischievously at Matthew sitting beside him at the kitchen table, before leaning over to him and giggling about how Declan was too busy acting like an angry grandpa to have _fun_.

Then, this one time, the whole thing almost backfired. They had been doing it for more than a year and a half and he had been waiting for that specific fall for almost two whole months. Kitchen window, 6 p.m. His mother had dropped him off after tennis practice way too late and he had also spent almost ten minutes circling around the kitchen, waiting for her to leave again. It was his turn to take the fall, which made everything more exciting, to the point his fingers were almost shaking as he climbed over the window frame, eyes closed as he stuck his head out in order to be able to stand upright. He had gotten way to tall, now, to properly fit.

What he didn’t know, right at that moment, was that Matthew had been sick since morning and was currently in bed, asleep and completely unaware of what day it was. He hadn’t noticed, with practice right after school and Matthew always oversleeping in the morning, and the not-looking part of the fall was the best one, so he had no reason at all to realize or expect Matthew didn’t have anything at all propped up.

He just shouted like he always did and let himself fall, legs straight, arms parted. Ready, excited, trusting. As one would expect, there was nothing soft to stop him from hurting himself. But there was something, way less hard and firm than the ground, expecting him, something that wrapped him in its arm and held him tight, shielding him from the impact.

“Oh _fuck!_”

He heard Declan’s weird teenage voice shout right behind his ear.

When Ronan got up, he was right there on the ground, holding his head with both hands, his face clearly twisted in pain.

“God, I hit my head! Oh, _son of a bitch!_”

Declan kept cursing and complaining until his mother came back home and was then forced to rush him to the hospital, while Ronan had to tell the truth about everything and was banning from doing it ever again.

It was kind of a bummer, to be honest, but it was okay.

There was no need for testing. Someone was always going to catch him.

\---

Ronan was a wreck. He would have been fine just passing out in a corner and spending the next two or three days sleeping and not doing anything else, but, luckily, he wasn't alone. And if up to that point he would have been able to laugh at Declan's scoldings to his face and carefully go around Matthew's worries, he was too tired to do that, now. So, instead, he helped Matthew push both of their beds together to make one giant one, witnessed Declan actually giving up and complying to join with his own and forced himself to eat at least something out of the entire takeout feast his brother had so carefully picked out.

He took a long, needed shower and changed into sweatpants, let Matthew escort him - _‘it’s five minutes, he’s not a fucking child’ ‘I just don’t want him to be alone!’_ \- while he smoked just one last cigarette downstairs and then spent the evening and most of the night marathoning whatever unnervingly soft cakemaking show he had picked, laying over his shoulder, even though it was kind of embarrassing and he felt pathetic, because it was so nice, for once, letting someone take care of him. 

“Have you decided to grow your hair back?”

Declan whispered at one point, after Matthew had fallen asleep, looking up at him. He looked calm and thoughtful and different, half-sitting against his pillow, hair disheveled and the tv making him glow golden, then powder blue, then pink. Something about the normal grey shirt he was wearing reminded him so much of home that he felt the need to sob uncontrollably. Why had it taken them so long to be like that again?

Of course, because chasing Declan away was the closest thing teenage-mess Ronan had to chase away mourning and pain, being mad at him meant not having to be mad at his parents, ignoring him meant, somehow, pretending that nothing had ever burned his family to the ground. Because it had been easier than just taking in the grief, easier than letting his wounds just ache.

“I don’t know yet. Doc said to avoid shaving for a while, to help scarring or some shit.”

He said, which was only half true. Sure, he was supposed to let the wound alone for as long as possible, but Ronan was also known for not listening to anyone ever.

He'd rather die than admit that he felt self-conscious going around with that mess of a scar completely exposed. And he was kind of enjoying the warmth, as winter got colder.

Declan probably knew he was omitting something because he always knew, somehow, but didn’t say anything about it.

“You should do it. It suits you.”

Was all that he said, looking right at him, before murmuring something about how _fucking tired_ he was and facing away from him. Ronan staid still, watching him until he fell asleep, and thought that it was nice. All of that, beautiful and weird as it was, was nice.

That maybe he didn’t deserve it and all of it was wasted on a guy like _him,_ but he could allow himself the luxury to accept it, just once, to soak in that love and pretend that everything was going to be okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> idk how i feel about this, i'm going beta-less again and i shouldn't, but i kinda don't have time to have people check. i liked it more before i reread it and i don't really know which part of me i should listen to.  
just know that i'm fond of declan and this chapter and even if it's a slower one i needed it to be its own thing, before we go back to the main course. family is beautiful and important, even if sometimes it's difficult.  
also, there's a lot of religious shit, expecially with what declan says, but it's supposed to be metaphorical, not preachy, it's kind of obvious to me but i wanted to be sure, since i'm very good at writing things wrong.  
i hope you like this lil one and enjoy the fluffy pause it was, we're no more than two chapter to the end and it's time, but i'm also kinda sad. once again, thank you all so much for commenting, i'm always so happy to read them all, even multiple time, but i'm shit at interacting and i never know how to say in response of the wonderful words you spare for this gigantic rambling mess. i'm so so so so grateful.  
it's been a weird journey but also a fun one and i'm happy i get to share it with someone who's kinda okay with the way i see stuff. i guess. it's almost 3am, words have lost their meaning long ago.  
until next time!


	14. saving yourself isn't a crime but it may not be victimless.

He sent one last text to Kavinsky, before shutting his phone off. It said _I’m sorry things had to end this way, but I can’t do this anymore. I think you should get help._

Declan had told him he had been way too nice, probably because he hadn’t included phrases like _you fucking asshole_ and _you’re fucking lucky I’m not reporting you to the police_. Probably because he thought Ronan owed him no last farewell text or _fucking apology_, but Declan didn't know. Sure, K was an asshole, he had done bad things to him and treated him like shit in a pretty consistent way ever since they started hanging out, but that was still someone he at least _had_ loved. Someone that had been kind to him, at times, in his own way, when he had needed it the most. Someone that used to smile at him and trace his jawline with his fingers and look at him in a way that made his world positively catch fire. And, sure, he didn't always make him feel safe and sometimes, when he did, there was something about it that felt kind of suffocating and scary and more like house arrest than witness protection but he had _enjoyed_ it. And now he felt guilty about having enjoyed it but even _more_ guilty about leaving when he didn’t enjoy it anymore. Loving Kavinsky was a Ferris wheel that never stopped, he had known that it would have probably been more nauseating than fun at one point, yet still chose to give it a try. Getting down felt wrong. Getting down meant breaking the rules.

Or did it? As time went on and Ronan kept obsessing over the same ordeal, both his brothers asleep around him, he started to question the validity of his own logic. He started to wonder if he would have felt the same way, were it Matthew or Adam or Gansey or any other of his friend in his place. It was a complicated matter, except for the fact that it wasn’t complicated at all. He would have just screamed at them to send the asshole packing, because that was a normal thing to do when someone hurt a person he loved. Except he just didn’t care about his own wellbeing enough to really _see_ himself and what was happening to him and what he had lost in the process of carrying out that relationship like it was a death sentence. Realizing it made him feel uncomfortable.

So he breathed in, slowly, turned to his side and decided to shut his brain off.

And then Declan’s phone started to ring.

The number wasn’t Kavinsky, but at fucking three a.m. Ronan just _knew_ something was wrong. He climbed over Declan, still half-asleep and already cursing, to grab it before he could and answer.

“Who the fuck is this?”

He was both angry and terrified, a horrible mix that meant he felt on fire but his blood run cold and he wanted to punch life in the face but his heart was beating too fast for his hands to be steady. His voice had to sound pathetic, but it didn’t matter.

“Ronan, is that you? Thank fucking god, are you okay?”

Adam’s voice, straightforward and polite, managed to calm the tiniest fragment of him down. But the rest of him just started panicking louder. Why was he calling in the dead of the night on Declan’s phone?

“I’m- yeah, I’m sorry I didn’t call you earlier but-”

“It’s fine. Did... did something happen? You’re not alone, are you?”

Why did he sound so worried? Why _the fuck_ did he sound so worried? For what godforsaken reason was Adam, reasonable and smart and not prone to that kind of freaking out, calling his brother’s phone at _fucking _3 a.m.?

Declan sat up, already worried and furious because, honestly, who _wouldn’t_ have been?

“No, I’m not. Declan’s here. Matthew too.”

He whispered, raising a hand to gesture at Declan to wait. It was shaking.

Something was wrong.

"Right, this is Declan's phone. I'm a fucking idiot."

“Adam, what’s going on?”

“Kavinsky is calling everybody.”

He had to remind himself to breathe. Of course it couldn’t be that easy. Of course Kavinsky wasn’t going to just let him leave without trying to set his life on fire.

“He doesn’t have my number or Blue’s but he called Noah, he keeps calling Gansey and now he has started calling even his parents.”

Of course. Of course he was trying to get at the people he loved. He could just picture it, Kavinsky calling his friend late at night, whispering filth about him, about what he had done, how fucked up and disgusting he really was. Talking to Richard Gansey second and trying to tell him where his money went, what kind of gross creature his son had helped to make.

He was freaking out. His hands were shaking so bad he almost dropped the phone.

“What is he saying?”

Ronan realized he didn’t really want to know.

“It doesn’t matter. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

Adam was so firm, so wonderfully resolute and ready that Ronan was almost able to breathe for a whole moment. He thought about how lucky he was, in a time like this, to have such a force of nature back into his life, to be able to count on a breathing and talking masterpiece of quick wits and protective instincts. A couple of hours before, he had been afraid to call and show himself for the mess he was. Now Adam was calling his brother, in the dead of the night, just to be sure someone could be _there_ to handle that same mess.

Ronan would have never been able to live through that alone.

“I am.” he whispered, meaning it, even just for that moment, even if it was meant to last no more than Adam’s voice in his ear “I broke up with him. That’s probably why he’s freaking the fuck out.”

Ronan knew he wasn’t meant to feel both guilty and excited, as he said it. He knew he wasn’t supposed to leave meaning splattered all over those words, to feel lighter just because he now looked somewhat better in Adam’s eyes.

But Adam was probably not supposed to let out a positively surprised _oh_ either. And he knew, he clearly knew, because he cleared his throat right after, adjusting his tone in something more serious, _appropriate_.

But it was too late, Ronan had already felt a rush of excitement so strong and sudden that he felt like a fucking teenager.

“Good. I mean, it must have been difficult, but it’s for the best. You deserve way better than that.”

_Yeah, maybe I do_ he thought, just for one moment, and he was sure his entire body was going to explode.

He nodded, like the idiot he was, then bit his lips as he met Declan’s extremely confused and slightly unnerved gaze. He didn’t have time to think about anything even remotely smart to say in response, Matthew’s phone began to ring too.

Panic rushed back through his veins as it had never stopped. Ronan felt stupid for allowing himself the luxury of relief.

“I have to go. I still need to take care of this thing.”

The worst feeling in the world was coming down after a good high. Sure, that could not count as a good metaphor, since a few words from Adam weren’t even nearly enough to completely calm his nerves down, but it had made him feel better, it had made him forget for a while, it had been another incredibly brief stay at that horrible motel that had given him the first good night of sleep in years. Home. Now, staring at Kavinsky’s number glowing on Matthew’s phone, he felt out in the cold again.

His brother had just woken up, eyes barely opened and brows furrowed, Declan leaning over him in an attempt to explain everything - or whatever version he had kind of outlined in his mind - to him. Ronan felt his heart sink so low inside of him he was sure it was going to drop to the ground. Matthew wasn't supposed to wake up in the dead of the night because a stranger was calling his phone to get at him. Declan wasn't supposed to be there, dark and worried, his voice soft in a way he didn't remember his brother's voice being, because desperate times called for desperate measures. It was all his fault, mean, dark, filthy Ronan Lynch fucking over his family again. It was an ongoing theme and his mind was absolutely loving the darkness the whole situation was feeding it.

“I’m going to take care of this.” he whispered, exhausted and angry and absolutely desperate.

That was what he had done to himself, what he had done to the people he loved. He took Matthew’s phone and moved to the bathroom, thinking about the light, about him desperately in love with K, about him complying and being kind and wanting things to work out even after their split, about his hopeless wish to make _him_ right. It was painful, watching it all burn down.

But you couldn’t just get down from an ongoing Ferris wheel. You had to jump out, break your legs and arms and maybe even your ability to feel safe ever again.

By the time he had reached the bathroom the phone had stopped ringing, but it didn’t take long for it to start again.

“What do you want?”

For once, his voice wasn’t shaking. His hands and legs were, his knees were so pliable he was barely standing, but his voice was firm. He was done. He was tired.

“Fucking finally. Shit, man, I knew you would have been all over that loser’s dick as soon as we were done, but that’s fast, Lynch. ‘was hoping you’d still have some time for your old master.”

Kavinsky’s voice was so slurred and distorted Ronan was shocked he could still enunciate words, let alone entire sentences. But he always had been a marvelous and terrifying creature.

Ronan didn’t even feel anything in particular, now, hearing it out loud. The threat of him was actually way scarier than the man himself. But his words were a whole other monster, the way they crawled under his skin. Ronan knew he hadn't been his own man in a while, but it disgusted him to remember how easily he had let himself be _owned_.

“Had to save you a spot. What do you want?” he whispered, low, now, his body so tense that the words were barely escaping his mouth. He wanted to run. His fight or flight response had been going off since the moment Declan’s phone had started ringing.

“Shit, Lynch, relax. ‘just wanna talk to my boy a little.”

It was kind of disgusting, to be honest, how those words sat in his stomach, poisoning everything, making breathing impossible. Ronan had left, taken his things and basically told him to fuck off, but Kavinsky still took all the liberty to call him like that, to demand his attention in the middle of the night. And Ronan was just letting him.

“We already talked. You had your chance. And I’m pretty fucking sure you made your case with the Ganseys earlier.”

“Fuck, man, you sound so fucking hot when you’re mad.”

It was so humiliating and underwhelming Ronan didn’t know what to say. He didn’t exist. In that conversation, whatever he said or did, just had no weight. That had been his great love, the one thing that was going to save him.

A fucked up thing for a fucked up boy.

“Why don’tcha come here and have fun with me? Take the edge off a little, you know I can make you feel good.” he whispered, smooth and raspy and weird, and Ronan wanted to break everything and himself, because it was so _fucking_ tempting. Because he knew it felt good, it always did, and it was easy. But then what? A couple of hours of drinking and drugs and sex, and then what? What would be left of him the day after, hungover and in withdrawal and sore?

Was it worth it? Was a life of lows worth a couple of hours of high, from time to time, with more regrets than memories to follow?

He didn’t want fun anymore. He wanted good. He wanted right.

“I can’t, K. I’m tired of hating myself in the morning.”

It was so easy and clear, that even Kavinsky stayed silent for a while. They weren’t used to that, they weren’t used to being real and raw with each other. The stakes for dealing in feelings were way too high.

“You don’t have to. I can make everything go away, every time you want. I can make your entire miserable life a fucking walk in the park.”

Ronan was absolutely sure he could. He knew, for a fact, that it was possible. Kavinsky was already doing that with himself, after all. Numb from dusk to dusk, to the point nothing felt real anymore. Nothing had taste or smell or consequences. Ronan was the only thing that still lived, that still burned.

“And you really think that’s a good way to live?”

“It’s the only one we got. Fuck-ups like us don’t get to choose.”

Except that they did. Ronan could choose, he had already chosen, taken the hard way, that one that included consequences and being awake and _making_ life something worth living. He had chosen to let everything inside him burn violently, even when it hurt, even when the smoke made breathing impossible, he had chosen to _feel_ happiness and pain and grief and sure, it wasn’t easy, sure it wasn’t always rewarding, but there wasn’t really anything better than being _there_, then being loud, breakable, to exist in tune with the world and let it all break his heart and put it back together again.

It felt good. Being alive felt good, even at that moment, as his stomach was clenched so tight he felt seek and his throat hurt so bad talking felt like a chore.

“There’s so much more than this.”

He just wished he could have been able to see it. But it was late for that, it had always been.

Kavinsky let out a breath that felt like a laugh, something mean and tired and heartbreaking.

“Not for me.”

The call disconnected, just like that, and it was over. And he didn’t feel better. He felt the strong, impending need to go to him, to shout some common sense to his head, to do anything at all to help. But he couldn’t. No one could save Kavinsky but Kavinsky himself and he didn’t want to be saved. He just wanted to drown.

He felt heavy, like something big and disastrous was going to happen. And he could just stand by and watch.

He stepped outside, slowly, not trusting his leg or any other part of his body as he slowly walked to the bed. Declan and Matthew had been whispering to each other but stopped as soon as they saw him, faces worried and eyes wary and tired searching him, scared of what they could find.

“It’s fine. Everything is under control. Go back to bed, I’m going down for a smoke and then I’ll join you.” he explained, though that didn’t really explain anything, because actually explaining meant Declan freaking out and probably calling the police and shit he wasn’t ready to deal with.

He gave Matthew his phone and grabbed for his own, showing it to Declan and hoping he’d silently understand, before leaving the room. He texted Adam again, as he went down on the elevator, figuring he might have needed some reassurance after that whole mess had taken place, then waited until he was outside, a cigarette lit between his lips, to call Prokopenko.

His body was tense, his guts twisted so tight he almost felt numb, but his heart was too all over the place for that.

“K doesn’t wanna talk with you. Piss off.”

“I will. But can you-”

“I won’t do shit for you, Lynch.”

“Just stay close to him, can you? He shouldn’t be alone right now.”

“Yeah, right. And whose fault is that?”

Ronan didn’t say anything. He just tried to slowly erase the question from his mind.

“Fuck off.”

Prokopenko _did_ stay close to Kavinsky. The firefighters found his body too, the morning after, while searching for anything that still breathed in the horrifying furnace Kavinsky had made of what used to be _their_ apartment. A place made for hiding. For dreaming. For running away.

If the whole situation hadn't been absolutely tragic and one last impossibly hard blow to Ronan's sanity, the way he found out would have been almost funny. Because since two bodies were found in the apartment and everyone in the building more or less knew Ronan - understandably so: he was tall and dark and mean-looking, kind of hard to miss - they were sure _he_ was the second once. And since Ronan hadn't been able to erase Declan's number as his emergency contact - for no particular reason, he had simply forgotten - his brother received a call asking him to identify Ronan's body as he was sitting beside him, looking like absolute shit, of course, after an all-nighter and too many difficult conversations weighing over his head, but unmistakably alive. Had he known what was happening, Ronan would have asked him to pass him the phone to deal with everything by himself, to hear the details and handle it like the responsible adult he was supposed to be, but Declan loved him too much to let him. He left the room, gave the police Kavinsky's family information and had them tell him exactly everything they needed to do.

He came back, sat back on his bed and breathed in. Ronan couldn't know the details. Rationally, it could have been about anything, from work calling Declan back, to stuff about the Barns, to some sketchy business still left around by their father. But he just felt it, weighing down on his chest since the night before. It was about K.

He didn't feel scared. He didn't even feel sad. There was a kind of tense anxiety knotting his insides together.

“It’s about K. He’s dead.” he whispered, and his voice struggled to come out, but the words were clear and easy.

He was more or less sure that his face had no expression over. It shocked him, how ready for it he was, maybe he had been for a long time. But it was obvious, really. Ronan had dated for years a drug dealer, affiliated to the mob, that spent literally all of his free time getting high over the worst shit, he knew the risks. That was why he was always so careful, so terrified, so easy to leave everything behind to join him.

It had taken him risking his own life, to actually be selfish enough to leave for a while, knowing things could go bad. So he knew. He was ready. The guilt had been building up inside him since he had left.

Declan nodded and Ronan looked away, out of the window.

“How?”

"The apartment burned down, in the morning. A neighbor called the firefighters, but it probably had been too late at that point."

Ronan snorted out a numb, bitter laugh. Fire. Of course, of course that was how Kavinsky would have gone down, something spectacular and horrendous, taking everything he could with him, leaving irreparable damages and consequences. He felt nauseous, something deep in his chest aching so impossibly bad that he felt like he was going to pass out, but kept it all in and nodded.

“They need someone to identify the bodies.” Declan explained, placing gently a hand on his knee.

He had gotten good at this. He wasn’t going to tell him he was better off without him like the day their father was buried. Ronan almost wanted to tell him he was impressed, but that was his brain climbing over every thought that could lead him away from the main deal, from a pain that excruciating.

"You don't have to do it. I can go, or we can wait for his family to show up first."

Ronan understood _he_ had changed, because he didn’t even think about saying _please_. He just shook his head, firm in his extreme containment, in the complicated operation of suppressing every feeling in order to function correctly.

“No, I’ll go. You said there was more than one body. I would still need to recognize the other one.” he whispered, which was just a way to let Declan feel like he had done his job incorrectly by forcing him to just let Ronan go without a struggle.

He didn't leave him time to answer, but just stood up and looked for his clothes. It was almost fascinating, how numb he felt, his brain was just a shell full of _unzip the bag_ and _take jeans _and _what is the right thing to wear to identify the body of your ex?_

It was different from when his father died. This was an anticipated kind of ache, it wasn’t spilling everywhere, he kind of knew how to hold it in.

He couldn't think about anything, his mind worked one task at a time. Right leg in, then left, close the zip and then button up. Which side of the sweatshirt was the front? Right, that one. Where did he put his socks? Did he have clean ones? He did. Right one, then left, then his boots, then washing his face. He watched his reflection in the mirror, lighter spots on his right side where his face had met the glass two months ago. They were barely noticeable, now, soon they would have just disappeared. His hair covered his scar completely and for just a couple of seconds, he found himself staring at his reflection, thinking _you don’t look like K’s boyfriend anymore_. He looked down at his hands, at the skin of his forearms left exposed by the black sleeves pulled slightly up. The end of a snake’s tail almost brushed over his wrist, professionally made, his own design, beautiful and neat. Just an inch from it, _FUCK OFF_ was scrabbled in Kavinsky’s handwriting, crooked and fading and clearly the result of a bad trip and Kavinsky’s tattoo machine. He was filled with regrettable small things like that, on his hands and arms and legs and chest. Every inch of his body was claimed, every inch _his_. Ronan thought he would have to cover all of them up with something. He was tired of being someone’s possession.

That was a problem for later, though. What mattered, at that moment, was not letting the though of Kavinsky’s mischievous grin as he held the needle stick to his head as he stepped outside the bathroom. So he though, _wallet_, then _phone_, then _should I let Declan come too? _and _no, he can’t leave Matthew alone and he can’t come_ then _holy shit, Matthew can come, he’s fucking nineteen, when the fuck did he get so big?_

“Pick me up in an hour.” he whispered, in the end, then put his headphones in and let other people’s words fill his mind instead of his own thought process as he walked out of the room, to the elevator, out in the streets, into a cab, out in the streets again. He had to take his headphones out when he met the policemen, but it was okay, he needed to listen.

Of course, Ronan had been the first one to show up, because K’s family hadn’t even responded yet. Ronan’s name and emergency contact, he thought, had to be way easier to search up, since no one was there to wipe away all of his charges every time _he_ was arrested. He gave them all he had, from the number of his mom's house in Henrietta, to his lawyer's, to that one uncle that was the closest thing K had to reach directly his father, since they didn't really talk or acknowledge each other existence anymore. Then followed them into the morgue.

The bodies were so fresh they almost didn't look dead, if it weren't from how badly they were burned Ronan would have just thought they were high on some bad shit. But they were not.

He looked at Prokopenko first and realized he had never said his full name out loud, before having to whisper it to the police. That he didn’t have any idea about where his family was, whether they were looking for him or not, whether the cared about him or not. He didn’t think about the fact that Ronan himself had asked him to spend the night with Kavinsky and indirectly led to a horrible death in a foreign city, with no love or glory or mourners. He didn’t try to justify himself by thinking he had probably been dead for a long time and that was the only reason why someone could train after Kavinsky so desperately for so long, that just wouldn’t have been fair. He just thought that was something he was going to have to live with.

Kavinsky was harder. He had to take a deep breath and hold all his bits to himself tight. Most of his face was still intact, enough for Ronan to feel a stab wound to the chest, to imagine his eyes looking at him, mean and empty and sometimes lovely, to ache all over remembering how many spots of that pale skin he had touched and kissed and loved, to feel on the verge of breaking down, before pulling back.

He closed his eyes and nodded, then whispered _yes, this is K- _then_ Josif Kavinsky _then _it says Joseph on the documents, I think._ Meanwhile, all his mind could process was _this is your fault, you did this, you did this to him, you made the wrong choice like you always do_ and then _there was nothing you could have done to save him, the only thing you could do was take Proko’s place_ and then _it’s not that easy and you know it _and then _they didn’t deserve this but neither did you._ He tried to stick with the last one and decided it was time to walk the fuck out of there.

It had been less than twenty minutes, which meant he had the time to go through half a pack of cigarettes, furiously chain-smoking because there wasn't really anything else he could do. His body was screaming, something vague that was loud and high-pitched and it hurt. It hurt. Nothing else. He wasn't sad, he wasn't angry, he didn't even feel guilty anymore, but everything _hurt_.

He didn’t say anything to Declan and Matthew when they came but reached for the warm bottle of vodka still abandoned under the passenger seat and drank it like it was water. He texted Adam that Kavinsky was dead and everything after that was just a blur.

His phone rang a lot, during the days leading up to the funeral. He answered it a couple of times, to let everyone know he was okay or, to be more specific, alive and breathing and not on the verge of a breakdown. But he was fine, really, after the twelve-hour, alcohol-induced nap he had taken after helping the police, he had been pretty stable. Sure, he didn’t really feel like talking, or eating, or doing anything, but that was more his body still processing everything, flushing out stress and panic and the thought that everything was going to bite him in the ass, somehow, even if he hadn’t done anything.

He hadn't cried, he didn't miss Kavinsky or wished he had done or said anything differently. He had done his best to help him, to save him, had gone above and beyond to give him everything he could while still trying to point him in the right direction and it had been for nothing, not because he was beyond saving, but because Ronan was barely a man, with his own baggage to carry already, and K had just been stubborn and resilient in following his personal path toward self-destruction. That was what he kept reminding himself.

He couldn't just not break up with him, stay just to keep patching him up and asking to maybe, just for him, try and be a better human being. That just couldn't work, not even if Ronan had still been in love with him and he hadn't been. Not after that last night, not after waking up with the hard, painful realization that if that was love, he didn't want it.

He just let himself grieve, in a way that maybe was less grand and heartbreaking than expected, but Ronan had always been weird and uncomfortable. And it didn't really feel real, to be honest. Sure, he has _seen_ the body, he knew he was dead, but it still felt like a hoax of some kind. It was Kavisnky, after all. He didn't feel like someone who could be killed.

He imagined him sometimes, smiling, laying on their bed high out of his mind. He could picture him, popping enough pills to make a horse blackout for a few days, lighting up his last blunt and then letting it burn over the expensive sheets. He imagined him leaning back and closing his eyes like a happy child just tucked in by his mom, Prokopenko passed out somewhere inside the room, unaware as everything slowly started to catch fire. Their bedroom was so full of flammable shit, alcohol and sketches and paintings filled with nightmares, it must have been so easy for it to catch fire. It felt like a dream, something too oniric and impossible to be real.

The funeral changed that. They drove all the way to Jersey to attend it, which was fine since they were going to leave the city anyway, now that they had no reason to stay. Even if Kavinsky would have absolutely adored the idea of people dressed like common idiots at his fucking funeral, he wasn't around to enjoy it, so he had to look presentable, in a place where he was already bound to stick out, being a dead person's ex and everything.

This led to Ronan attempting to put on Declan's clothes, which fit horribly with his brother being an inch shorter and several pounds of muscle heavier than him, so he had to resort to his old church clothes, stashed away at the bottom of a bag after spending four whole years folded and hidden from sight. It was weird, realizing that they fit perfectly. Ronan used to wear the collared shirt and elegant pants like an odd, tall scarecrow, everything just a little too loose and long, because he had been a pissy teenager who liked to complain about how everything was tight and weird and uncomfortable, exclusively when Declan bought him nicer things. Now he had just grown into everything, which felt weird and absolutely right.

As he stepped into the church, Matthew by his side, he realized he hadn't been in one in four years. A funeral was a weird way to go back to an old tradition, but Ronan was kind of a weird guy, so it made sense. He dipped his fingers in holy water and knelt as he made the sign of the cross, the gestures familiar and automatic and he felt different, lighter as he sat on a plank in the back, away from relatives and affiliates and no one else

, since the church was eerily empty.

One could argue that Kavinsky had left Jersey years ago, that his current friends were all in New York, but it was less than two hours drive, seeing that not even one of them had come, that most of them probably didn't even know he was dead, made him both sad and kind of angry.

It was a weird funeral, where nobody cried or said a word or seemed to care. Not even his father was there, which didn’t surprise Ronan at all, with the snippets of past and truth that K had given him throughout the years.

When Niall Lynch died, the church had been packed with people, all struggling to give them their condolences, hold his mother's hand, pat Declan on the shoulder and tell them that they weren't alone, that everything was going to be okay. Ronan had been furious, back then, but he remembered clearly how warm everyone had been, how much love and thought were stored in many of those careful whispers and handshakes.

Everything felt cold, now, everyone looked distant and bored, even as they paid their respects to K's mother at the end of the function. She smiled wider as they got close to her, eyes red and half-lidded under heavy makeup, skinnier and more tired than he remembered her. He didn't think she'd recognize him, but he was wrong.

"Ronan. I knew you'd come." she whispered, cupping his face in her hands in such a delicate way that it shocked him "You were so good to him. Such a good boy."

He didn't know, exactly, what it was. Maybe the cracks in her voice, the emotions coming out only then, only for him, because she knew he was the only one that was going to come, only one who cared. Maybe the way she wrapped her arms around him, pulling him down and close without putting any strength in it, a hold that was soft and desperate and absolutely needed. Maybe it was just K being talked about in the past tense, like someone that had been, that he couldn't be good to anymore.

Ronan just knew that the loss was suddenly so heavy and palpable he felt like he couldn't speak or breathe or exist anymore. That he stayed there for a bit too long before pulling away and he didn't cry, he didn't make a sound, but when he tried to look at Kavinsky's mother again her face and the church and everything was blurry. That when he stepped out, hand gripping so tight at Matthew's arm that it probably left marks, he almost didn't recognize his friends waiting outside, but then he did and he was so glad they were there that crying felt like an impending threat once again.

He blinked quickly and breathed in, regaining ownership over himself, because he didn't run away from things and feelings anymore, but that didn't mean he was going to let himself spill right there, outside, with strangers and cars and the sun still out.

“You all know that showing up like this is creepy as shit, right?” he asked instead, with a grin that didn’t try to look like a menace but was just a reassurance that he was still fine, still Ronan, maybe in a good way for once.

Gansey looked perplexed in a weird and new way, less questioning and more amusingly done, while Noah had to cover his mouth with one hand to hide an inappropriate laugh and Adam just shook his head, beautiful and a bit worried and happy to see him. He didn't have time to see Blue's reaction, though, with her immediately leaping to wrap him in the tightest hug he had ever felt, too raw and amazing to accept the whole "not public displays of feelings" ordeal. Ronan silently thanked her for it.

"You're such an asshole." she whispered, shutting off his lungs with arms that had no business being that strong "Just accept it. All of it."

He did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have no idea how good this may be. in fact, it may be not good at all, but it be like that sometimes. i still put much love and care in it, so i hope you like it. i started feeling really guilty and sad that you guys may think i don't appreciate you commenting, expecially after last week, so i tried to make it up all at once, which is very weird and not cool of me, but eh, what can i say.  
writing this was scary, writing about pain and mourning always is, they are such personal feeling that i don't know if i'll ever be able to portrait them the right way. i hope you like what i do regardless.  
thank to my best friend and everything and basically love of my life, for still telling me nice things and pushing me to write, because otherwise i would just Not Do It.  
thank you so much to everyone who reads, leaves kudos or comments because it sincerely keeps me going.  
if you want to bother me in a direct way, i have a [tumblr](http://crostiina.tumblr.com), just pls don't use it to be mean to me or i'll die.  
the next one will probably be the last.  
bye!


	15. accept that you're raw and weird and imperfect, that's exactly what makes you so, so lovely.

They didn’t stay in Jersey longer than it took Ronan to smoke two cigarettes, Declan and Gansey to have a horrendously boring conversation about university or work or life or whatever weird adult thing they could find interesting and Blue to complain approximatively a billion of times about the fact that Ronan smoked. Which was still a great time, considering how the previous week had been treating him. And it was always kind of nice, regardless of the circumstances, to feel wrapped in that silent and still undeniably present kind of love.

The ride to DC was long and pretty uneventful, with Declan complaining from time to time about the fact that Ronan absolutely he had to get a new car, Ronan mocking each and every word like the six-foot-two child he was and Matthew leaning between them from time o time to change the radio station or mess with the volume and generally breaking the silence in a way that Ronan liked, because it didn't leave space for dark thoughts and darker feelings. And sure, that was absolutely the clearest display of how much the Lynches just couldn't fucking handle situations and feelings and themselves in a normal way - especially after they started pointing out how sketchy or funnily dressed or just plain weird had been this or that person at the funeral, almost ignoring the fact that had been a funeral at all - and that probably made them look like mean lizards dressed in human skins to anyone external to the family, but that was what Ronan liked the most about them. They didn't need to constantly pat each other on the shoulder or whisper sweet words every ten miles to show support, Ronan knew he was loved, he knew they were going to be there for him and every joke or comment or

pointing out a weird looking mountain was another way his brothers had to cheer him up, divert his attention, make life seem less mean and hard to navigate. They knew he wasn't ready for anything flashier than that and maybe they weren't either.

It still wasn’t enough to get him an appetite when they all stopped at a gas station for lunch, but at least no one bothered him about it, except for Gansey asking him once if he was hungry and Blue trying to force her stale sandwich in his mouth three or four times, but that made him laugh a little, so it was fine.

They stopped again in D.C., to drop his brothers off, and only then he let Matthew hug him, arms strong enough to make his spine crack a little and cheek soft against Ronan's impossibly bony face. Declan didn't hug him and it was fine, because Ronan wasn't ready for whatever awkward and uptight hold would have come out of it, but it still shook him to his core when he laid one hand on his cheek in a touch so soft and gentle it reminded him of how bad and for how long he had desperately strived for love.

Ronan felt weird when he pulled his hand back, but Declan looked kind of shocked too, so it was absolutely fine with him. Still, neither of them regretted it.

“Text me when you get there. And at least try to take care of yourself.” he said, which meant that if he didn’t stop smoking and start eating and sleeping like a normal human being he was definitely going kick his ass.

“We’ll see. If you_ at least try_ to get off my dick.” Ronan sneered back with a grin, which meant that of course, he was going to try, regardless of the odds he liked the idea of actually living to thirty. Maybe even more than that.

“Ronan, for fuck’s sake, you’re an adult. This isn’t funny.”

And it wasn’t, but it was way easier for them to communicate like that, so it was a nice way to say goodbye for now.

Ronan felt kind of relieved as he watched his family disappear in Declan’s apartment building, not because he didn’t like spending time with them or wasn’t grateful, but there was a different kind of pressure that built up inside of him when he was around his family, because he knew that him hurting meant them hurting and not being able to come to terms with the fact that they couldn’t really _do_ anything to stop it.

That was why he felt was the closest thing to absolute bliss he could fathom when Adam knocked at the BMW window and leaned inside the car as soon as Ronan rolled it down.

“Mind if I join you? Turns out your friends start to feel less like your friends if you spend an entire day trapped in a car with them.” he explained, his accent sweetest and more pronounced than ever after that long of a day.

Ronan didn't know if Adam was really that stressed after hours oh sharing his space with the others - absolutely comprehensible - or that was just his way of sparing him a couple of hours by himself, with grief still clinging to every part of his body, but considering how many time he had pulled that kind of stunt with Adam, it would have been fair regardless.

“Sure thing. Hop in, cowboy.” he joked, gesturing at the passenger seat, before quickly unlocking the doors.

“Yee haw.” Adam deadpanned, looking absolutely unbothered and Ronan loved him a little harder for it.

Ronan started the car and they sat in silence for a while, Adam with an elbow over the door and his head elegantly leaning against his hand as he contemplated the southern roads, Ronan with his grip loose on the steering wheel and his mind focused on the white lines on the asphalt and the road signs and not thinking about Kavinsky dead under the ground.

It was weird. He felt weird. Not good, not bad, just the most neutral, the most uncomfortable weird. That, particularly, he didn’t like. He turned to look at Adam and found him staring back, calm and ready and aware. He knew Ronan wasn’t okay, he knew he was supposed to feel that way and there was nothing anyone could do, except for giving him time. Adam also knew he didn’t need to say any of that out loud for him to understand.

He just kept looking at him, pale lashes fluttering elegantly over eyes that were the calm after every storm ever, unbothered and calm and everything Ronan wanted to crash into.

Adam looked beautiful like a statue and an angel and something Ronan absolutely wanted to be his. He looked like home and summer and the only place where he wanted to lay his own soul to rest. And fuck, was he tired. Fuck, did he need it.

Ronan didn’t say anything, he just pulled over, laid his head against the steering wheel and tried to breathe. He thought about Kavinsky’s mom and the empty seats in the church and the blade sliding across his kitchen table, about _whose fault is that_ and a raspy and offbeat but beautiful laugh and cocaine-blown eyes, about warm skin and face tattoos and _two weeks or three months or five years_. He thought about life and his father splattered on the concrete and the Pig and the freckles on her mother’s cheek and Adam almost kissing him before pulling back. He thought he was a leech and a black hole and everything that had ever been wrong about his life and Ronan didn’t know whether it made any sense, now, in the middle of the interstate with the sun already down, he didn’t know why looking at Adam made him think about any of that, he just thought he needed answers and to know that he was going somewhere, anywhere, that all of that hadn’t been for nothing.

Then Adam brushed his fingers against his neck, all the way to the back of his head and Ronan just started crying, without a reason or with every reason he had ever had all jammed together right there. It was just so easy. He covered his face with both hands and kept going, pressed against the steering wheel, loud and hard and so fucking tired, while Adam's hand kept touching his hair and his back and something inside his ribcage slowly started to shift back into its place.

“You did good, Ronan. I’m proud of you.”

Ronan didn't know how badly he had needed someone to tell him that, until Adam did. And it was better than any kiss and victory and reward because it fed something so deep inside of him, so delicate and hidden, Ronan had forgotten how important it actually was, how crooked and painful his life had been ignoring it.

He had been so desperate, so focused on being dangerous and sharp and unwanted, he had forgotten how good it felt to be proud, to be right. And letting Adam say it was cheating, because he couldn’t say no to him, but loving himself was too complicated not to seek out any help.

“Do you want me to drive?”

Ronan took his time to sit up straight, to rub his palms against his face, because dignity was something he had to fight hard to win back and clinging to him made him feel strong and worthy.

He looked at Adam, worried and sweet and something he loved with every fiber of his being.

“Fuck.” he whispered, half-laughing, almost weirded out by how easy everything felt, how embarrassing and ridiculous and _right. _Then he added

“Please.”

They switched places quickly and Ronan didn't think or ask before laying his head on Adam's shoulder, everything suddenly sweeter, lighter to carry, as the road unraveled in front of them both. He turned on the stereo and changed the station a couple of times, then breathed in Adam's scent. He thought that it was exactly what he had imagined love to feel like.

It was a start, for hor how embarrassing and weird it was. Ronan was grateful for it.

\--- 

Ronan had basically been raised in a farm, which meant he knew how life, in the practical sense, worked. He knew, for example, that a cow took more or less the same time as a human being to give birth, but that unlike human children, calves started to walk as soon as they were born, because different creatures had different needs and what worked for some things absolutely didn't for others. He knew that there was a weed that kind of looked like wheat, so much that one could have been tempted to keep watering it and caring for it until it somehow caught up with the real thing, but that there were things that could not be changed and sometimes trying just meant wasting time and energy and love. He knew that, regardless, anything needed to be grown, and that took the right time and space and kind of care, with a little love peppered on top, and that messing any step of the process meant risking it all. That sometimes things didn't turn out right even after taking the right precautions because they just didn't start off right and others weren't meant to be at all. That sometimes things could be so irremediably ruined the only thing to do was hacking them at the roots and others could be extremely close to perishing, but still ended up flourishing wonderfully, in their charmingly crooked way.

Coming home, it helped, thinking about himself, not as something to be fixed, but to be grown. He liked the idea of not being dead and gone, of still having space to settle into something imperfect and good. And Ronan needed to see himself as an external thing, something to nurture and care for, day after day, giving himself time and space to come out right.

It helped him make peace with the fact that sometimes he still panicked when his phone rang because he wasn’t used to it being a normal thing, then with the guilt and pain that crawled under his skin every time he thought about the ghost that used to make his heart skip, about how and why he was not going to make him lose sleep and hyperventilate ever again.

Dealing with Kavinsky, in any kind of form, was difficult. It took a couple of days for Ronan just to adjust to the idea of the vacant space in the world where he used to be. It took even more for him to stop checking his phone from time to time exclusively to see if he had texted or posted fucked up shit on social media.

Ten days after going back to Henrietta, he managed to make a deal with a tattoo artist and, over the course of a weekend, got almost all of the sign of Kavinsky still inked over his body covered up. Flowers and leaves now bloomed where rotten words and death and hopelessness used to stain the skin, caressing the snake crawling over his right arm, the spiteful claim over his thigh, the scrabbles and wicked images in bigger and smaller spots all over. He asked Blue to help him pick small drawings to cover his fingers, drew delicate and pleasant things, absolutely ready for the _nightmare_ to be over.

Of course, covering them up didn't mean erasing their existence: words and thoughts and night horrors were always going to be there, just under his skin, just like the memories of years of love and pain and fucked up shit were going to stay with him, at the bottom of his soul, ready to hit him when he was least expecting it. There were also a lot of other things he just couldn't get rid of, not even at surface level, not even at all. A scar shaped like a K low on his hip, too painful for him to look at or show it even in a tattoo parlor. The habits of taking a small sip from his mug in the morning, to make sure even when there was nothing to be careful of, before drinking the whole thing. His heart going off every time Adam casually pointed out something he had done wrong, just for a minute, whether it was misplacing one of his things or finishing the shower gel or anything at all. Waking up in the middle of the night, again and again, because of the nightmares or the memories or just purely out of habit. Growing those things out was going to take time, patience, and someone sweet and resilient enough at his side to remind him just that. That he was healing and not broken and it _was_ going to be okay, no matter how hard it seemed at times.

Growing back the part of himself that wanted love took time too, after Kavinsky had poured gasoline all over it and started a fire that went on for weeks, leaving him numb from the pain, filling his lungs with smoke and his chest with ashes.

But Ronan had pain attention, not in school but to his father’s stories, and he knew that was just another way to prepare the soil. That once the rain had poured all over, merging the ashes together with the earth, everything was going to become fertile again, warm and inviting. And Ronan had let everything flow, after years of locking it in, of drinking to chase it away and loathing how weak and desperate it made him feel.

He had let himself spill, over Adam’s shoulder and under his careful fingers, again and again, until most of it was out, until he felt real and alive again. He had felt different every time he had looked up at him, tired and empty but warmer, a step closer to healing, a step closer to everything feeling right again.

And Adam was just something else, dandelion spawned from tattered concrete, forgotten and mistreated and stepped on again and again, yet still blooming so fiercely that sometimes looking at him hurt. Adam, strong over everything else, fragile at the seems, made to strive and want and be so shamelessly worshipped.

Loving him had been so easy Ronan sometimes forgot it wasn't just part of the excruciating ordeal of being alive. He had grown that love inside him for years, without even realizing, without being able to rip it away, and now roots dug deep in the cavities of his heart and ivy crawled around his bones, his ribcage a wildflowers' vase where nothing had space to echo in his chest anymore. It was beautiful and powerful and absolutely terrifying.

He could see seeds and sweetgrass in Adam's eyes too, sometimes, in his smile half-asleep in the morning, trailing after his fingers as they brushed over Ronan skin, without taking, without asking for more than he was ready to give. He felt it over his chest when he was pressed against it and on his shoulder when he leaned on it and in his arms every time they were wrapped around each other. It was something different, more subtle and quiet, because that was just how Adam was and he wasn't going to ask, not even with a whisper, not even for love.

It happened on Christmas eve, while everything was warm and the Barns were filled with light and joy. Adam had trailed off a while before, looking for something, maybe a quiet spot, maybe a more appropriate part of himself, after hours of all of them getting drinking and trying to forget, to make promises to themselves, to love a little better. He had been looking at Ronan all night, slightly off-beat, almost impatient, with a weird reflection in his eyes that almost couldn't wait for everything to be over. Ronan hadn't thought about finding a reason. There were many things not to like about the holidays, from the blatant capitalism to the religious undertone to the way it pushed them all to forget, to be happy, to be quiet. He just went looking after him just because he was Ronan and that was what he did, that was what everyone who loved the way he loved did.

He went up the stairs and didn’t even need to look, he just saw the door to his room half-opened and knew Adam had to be there. And he was, looking golden and warm under the soft light of Ronan’s old desk, sitting on his bed staring right at him, like he had been waiting just for Ronan to show up. He sat down beside him, not knowing what to say.

He thought about the first time he had seen him, walking under the sun, a spectacle of tan skin and slender limbs and beautiful eyes, tired and hungry and breathtakingly feral. About the way he smirked every time he scored higher than Ronan in Latin, the tempting strip of skin left uncovered by his collared shirt, the way he had looked at him outside the hospital, worried and angry and sad and everything all at once because Adam was just unable to be anything less than a force of nature. He thought about him being mean, him being funny, him being tired and bruised and unreachable, about late night over St. Agnes and the both of them sitting one beside the other, unable to talk, grateful just to exist without complications.

Ronan had been in love with Adam Parrish for so long that it had just become a part of him, something breathing and living somewhere under his skin. And there had been a time when he had thought that meant he was wicked and dirty, and a time when he had thought that made him a fool, and a time when he had thought that could be enough to save his soul and life and everything, and he had always been wrong.

He was in love with Adam and, right at that moment, it meant that his scent was the only thing Ronan wanted to breathe for the rest of his life. It meant that every part of his body just screamed at him to get close, enough to feel his warmth, enough to burn. It meant his eyes made his heart beat faster, but also that they made something deep inside his soul so impossibly, beautifully still.

He was in love with Adam and it meant that he was way too beautiful like that, staring right back at him, eyes different, hungry and ready and absolutely on fire, everything about him magnetic exactly the way Ronan felt.

He was in love with Adam and he thought _please, just let this be enough, I know I’m weird and messed up but loving you has been the first right thing I’ve done, I know we both need time and space to grow because we’ve been busy eating glass and breathing gasoline, I know you’ll need me and I’ll need you and everything is just horrible and difficult and fucked up, but how wonderful, how fucking hilarious would it be, if we navigated through it hand in hand?_

Ronan was in love with Adam and when he leaned forward to kiss him, Adam was leaning too, and Ronan thought love was a terrifying and magnificent force as they met halfway, both nervous like teenagers with shaky hands and beating hearts and how beautiful, how funny and infinitely marvelous it all was.

How warm, how absolutely right.

\---

There was still one of Kavinsky's tattoos on Ronan's chest. It was a small, crooked thing, three words one after the other, barely noticeable in the sea of ink and pale skin of his body.

_Omnia vincit amor._ Love conquers all.

The first time Adam had noticed it, he had traced the letters with his fingers, slowly, spelling it out in his mind, because there were things about Ronan that still ached to talk about, just like there were still things about Adam that were too dark and twisted to be brought to light. It was fine, because they were young and eager to live, to burn, to fix the things about them that life had made crooked, aware that the road was still long and ready to fight their way through it.

It took Ronan a while but, eventually, he let it out on his own, after Adam had left another slow trail of soft kisses right over it.

"I told him to do it." he whispered, pointing at it, before brushing his fingers through Adam's hair, his touch always so soft and careful that it made something inside of him melt "It was the first one I got, still in Henrietta. It was stick and poke."

He closed his eyes and laid his head over his chest, letting his fingers trail down over his hips, to his legs still wrapped around him.

Knowing that didn’t surprise him: that hadn’t been the only thing he had asked Kavisnky to etch into his skin. Just the only one that had survived.

“It was a joke.”

That _had _thrown him off. Because Ronan had tensed up a little, saying it, and Adam know that it didn’t mean he was lying, just that it hurt. Because Adam knew that Ronan loved everything shamelessly and completely, that he had loved his poetry and his classics and his words and something about the act of desecrating them like that just made him impossibly sad. He didn’t say anything, just wrapped his arms around his waist and held him tight.

“Because love hadn’t done shit for me.”

Adam liked that it was a past thing. He liked that love now meant something more than broken promises and something out of reach.

"I was an idiot."

It could have sounded like a small thing, but it wasn't. Ronan had a hard time forgiving himself for all the things he had done, even _to_ himself. He was fine with spending his entire life in repentance.

But Adam was of a different accord.

"You were seventeen."

A kid. Barely something more than a child. Easy to bruise and trap and get lost in the depths of his own self-hatred.

Everyone knew, Ronan seemed to be the only one still struggling to forgive himself for slipping. But Adam was fine with reminding him, from time to time, with pulling him back up every time he let himself fall back into the same old dark places. Just as Ronan was fine doing the same for him, every time, without missing a beat.

He thought Ronan was going to fight, to cling tooth and nail to his hatred. But he didn't.

"I love you."

He whispered, instead, and it was better than any answer Adam could ever receive.

"I love you."

He whispered back, and it wasn't enough to save lives or end wars or change people, but it was fine.

It was more than enough. They could take care of the rest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> let's get some things out of the way: i know, for a fact, that i got a couple of things wrong. i still to this day don't really know if ronan is twenty-one or twenty-two, probably the second one, because i made a couple of miscalculations at the beginning so i wrote the whole thing as if it had been three years instead of four. also, since some planning has changed from the beginning, i unintentionally made the month of december like two times longer than it is, but heh, what can i say, i'm horrible at planning AND math. i'm sorry, for these and other mistakes that slipped here and there, i'm too sensitive to have someone beta most of the time and there's so much you can do with grammarly and your attention span at 3 am. please forgive me and thank you, for reading regardless.  
i also don't know if i always got the characters right, if i always did the right thing or if any of this makes sense to anyone that isn't me, but you've got this far it has to mean you liked it, even one bit, so thank you for being patient with me. i did my best, every time, and i hope it's enough for you as it is for me.
> 
> this has been both my first story in english and the first proper thing i've written since when i was seventeen. i'm twenty-one now, which may be why these numbers show up so often all throughout this story. a lot of things changed since then, i've changed and lost a lot, learned many things about myself and people and love. we don't realize how unkind we can be to ourselves until nice things get back into our lives and we're forced to look back, to realize that maybe there isn't just one way our lives can go and maybe if something bleeds and hurt it isn't really the right choice. it's a big fucking monologue for what is just a fanfiction, but i'm shameless about the things that i love and how i love them, and i've put a lot of love and time and effort in this story, so maybe it's weird, wasting so many words about it, but i've stopped worrying a long time ago about what is or isn't weird. or at least i try.  
but i need this because, first and foremost, i have to thank my best friend. and not only because she has consistently encouraged me to keep writing, to push through, reassuring me that yeah, it's alright, no matter how hard my own words make me sick sometimes or how much fun i have hating myself, but because without her i wouldn't really think that any kind of healing could be possible. because hope is difficult and may be stupid but i have it now, thanks to her. so thank you gigia, love of my live whom i love above all.
> 
> a huge, gigantic thank you also has to go to the screaming server, because i didn't even think i liked writing fanfiction anymore until i threw the idea over there and was met with so much support that it threw me off. so, specifically, i have to thank em for being the first one to read and encouraging me to go on, michelle for reading every chapter and helping me when plotting got impossible and supporting me in a way that still blows me away sometimes, ej for the love and telling me that it was hot and she wanted to read it, kayla for fucking being there all the time without me even realizing it like, dude are you even real. and everyone there, honestly, for just being there for me and lovely when i wasn't myself. I love all of you very much.
> 
> and, finally wrapping this whole thing up, thank you to everyone who read, left kudos and comment and supported me all throughout this journey, it hasn't been always easy but it was amazing doing it with you. i hope you liked it the way a like it and maybe even a little bit more. words can't explain how grateful i am for every little thing i found during this journey.


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